We recently published a list of Top 10 Favorite AI Stocks of Brad Gerstner. Since Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 6th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Brad Gerstner, the founder of Altimeter Capital, has been a major believer in AI and tech stocks in general. Recently, the 53-year-old hedge fund manager shared some interesting data points highlighting the importance of tech stocks during an interview with Scott Galloway’s YouTube channel.
“Since 2014 technology earnings have compounded at 16% and technology stocks have compounded at 18%. Non-tech earnings have compounded at about 4% and stocks at about 6%. So if you look at the long run of technology since 2005 it’s gone from 5% of global GDP to 15% of global GDP,” Gerstner said.
Gerstner, whose firm manages about $10 billion in assets, emphasized during the interview that the risk of not investing in AI is higher than the risk of investing. He was addressing the market concerns about ROI on AI spending.
“As a professional investor, we’re just trying to determine what level of asymmetry what level of enthusiasm or exuberance is baked into these stocks and what are we seeing day to day in terms of usage and revenues out of the consumer,” he said.
For this article we scanned Altimeter Capital’s Q2 portfolio and discussed its biggest AI stock picks. 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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Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Brad Gerstner’s Stake: $277,184,273
Amazon is also among the top AI picks of Altimeter. Brad likes AMZN because of its e-commerce business.
Cantor Fitzgerlad recently initiated coverage of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) with an Overweight rating and said in a broader industry note that despite strong performance, many tech stocks remain attractively valued.
“Despite strong performance over the last 18 months, valuations in internet names are fairly reasonable and should benefit from the expectation for upcoming rate cuts, tempered by decelerating top-line growth and as benefits from widespread cost-cutting fade,” Cantor said.
AWS’s revenue growth accelerated from 17.2% in Q1 to 18.8% in Q2, driven by a shift from on-premises infrastructure to cloud solutions and increasing demand for AI capabilities. Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) advertising segment added over $2 billion in revenue year-over-year, indicating significant potential in video advertising and opportunities within Prime Video offerings.
Like other tech companies, fears stemming from high CapEX are keeping investors on the sidelines. Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) spending is expected to rise amid broadband project Project Kuiper and AI growth. Investors are still figuring out whether AI monetization and ROI will come anytime soon. Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) is also facing a slowdown in consumer spending, especially for higher-ticket items like electronics and computers.
Based on Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) Q3 guidance, its revenue growth would be 11%. The stock is trading 35x its fiscal 2025 earnings estimates set by Wall Street. This shows the stock is fairly priced and investors looking for strong growth could look elsewhere.
Hayden Capital stated the following regarding Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Our portfolio is still recovering from the 2022 downturn, although we’ve made meaningful progress in the last two years. While that experience has taught us many lessons, that dislocation also provided a rich vein of opportunities that we continue to mine today
Some of our biggest winners in the last two years, have been “re-acceleration” stories. These are cases where once rapidly growing companies suddenly put the brakes on during a weak economy. There could be several reasons for this – customers pulling back during a recession, the company proactively curtailing growth spend as a precaution, needing to cut costs & right-size the business to become profitable quickly, or many other reasons.
But the commonality seems to be that as soon as growth stops, the market narrative turns suddenly from positive, to “this company is finished”. They go from being valued for many years of rapid growth, to being priced like a mature company that will never realize significant growth again. But often neither scenario is true, with the ultimate future path somewhere in between.
I find the fact this type of opportunity even exists, fascinating. Especially since it seems to happen every bear-market – perhaps indicating it’s embedded in human nature (and thus persistent & likely minable throughout one’s investing career). For example, I gave the examples of Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock performance in our Q1 2022 letter (please re-read this piece for more context; LINK)…” (Click here to read the full text)
Overall, Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) ranks 6th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 Favorite AI Stocks of Brad Gerstner. While we acknowledge the potential of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), 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 AMZN 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.