We recently published a list of Hedge Funds are Buying and Selling These 10 AI Stocks. Since Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) ranks 5th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
The AI-led rally in the stock market is expected to ripple through other sectors and smaller tech companies, but analysts believe for now large-cap companies are still the key focus of money managers. Morgan Stanley in its August key themes report said that while small-cap stocks rebounded on rate-cut hopes, the window for their outperformance is “too narrow.”
“Historically small cap outperformance depended primarily on economic growth acceleration. Greater risk exposure to a “higher-for-longer” rate environment has added inverse rate correlation to the mix. While periods of growth acceleration with lower rates are plausible (e.g. end-2023), we see this combination as relatively unlikely in the current inflation environment. The recent decline in interest rates was a tailwind to small cap stocks, but softer economic data likely limits the durability of this trade,” the firm said.
The latest earnings season showed that ROI on the huge AI spending by major companies is small in the short term, but long-term gains seem promising. Many companies have already started seeing monetization on their AI investments. Goldman Sachs analysts Joseph Briggs, Kash Rangan, and Eric Sheridan said in a June report titled GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND, TOO LITTLE BENEFIT? that they remain more optimistic about AI’s economic potential even if we don’t see immediate benefits for now.
Hedge funds are one step ahead of average individual investors due to the sheer scale of resources and capital they have. That’s why it’s always interesting to see which stocks they are buying and selling. In this article we take a look at the 10 most important AI stocks which were on the radar of elite money managers based on their second-quarter filings. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
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Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Total Number of Hedge Fund Investors as of the End of Q2: 184
Total Number of Hedge Fund Investors as of the End of Q1: 150
Perhaps the biggest news around Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) related to the latest 13F filings from hedge funds was Warren Buffett’s Berkshire cutting its stake in the company by 50%. Who else is jumping the Apple ship? Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office cut its stakes in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to 24,000 shares during Q2 from about 115,000 shares. Billionaire Ray Dalio’s fund reduced its position in the company to 469K shares from 1.84 million shares. Billionaire DE Shaw’s fund cut its Apple stake by 33%. Billionaire Israel Englander, on the other hand, increased his stake in the company by 68% via Millennium Management.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a new bull: billionaire Dan Loeb. The founder of the New York-based hedge fund Third Point said in a latest letter to investors that Apple has a significant upside potential due to AI.
“We believe Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently announced ‘Apple Intelligence’ suite of AI-enabled smartphone features – the most compelling of which is a next-generation virtual assistant – will start driving meaningful new demand within Apple’s installed base, resulting in accelerating revenue growth on two fronts. First, iPhone revenue is going to see a marked improvement because Apple Intelligence features will not be backwards-compatible with existing iPhone models, creating the conditions for a forced upgrade cycle. Second, Apple’s App Store is likely to become the primary distribution platform for most new consumer focused AI apps such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT (with which Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently announced a partnership). We expect Apple’s claim on the future economics of these apps to be substantial as it exploits its distribution advantage.”
Loeb reiterated the bull case that many other Wall Street analysts have made. This case assumes that millions of people will upgrade their iPhones because they’d want to use AI-powered new models of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) flagship device.
However, the assumption that we will see a huge upgrade cycle of iPhone just because of AI is big and comes with a lot of risks. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) trades at a forward PE multiple of around 35x, well above its 5-year average of nearly 27x. Its expected EPS forward long-term growth rate of 10.39% does not justify its valuation, especially with the iPhone upgrade cycle assumption. Adjusting for this growth results in a forward PEG ratio of 3.33, significantly higher than its 5-year average of 2.38.
Third Point Management stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
In April, we took a position in Apple, the world’s leading consumer technology franchise, with an ecosystem of 2.2 billion devices spanning a broad array of form factors including smartphones, tablets, laptops, watches, earphones, and smart home devices. Apple excels in most of these device categories, with revenue share of 50-60% in several key markets.
Despite Apple’s dominance as a business, its stock had become increasingly “under-owned” by institutional investors and its relative multiple had compressed toward a multi-year low. We believe that this was due to several years of stagnant earnings growth, exacerbated by more recent fears that Apple may turn out to be an AI loser. Our research led us to a different conclusion: we believe AI-related demand could drive a step change improvement in Apple’s revenue and earnings over the next few years…” (Click here to read the full text)
Overall, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) ranks 5th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Hedge Funds are Buying and Selling These 10 AI Stocks. While we acknowledge the Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.