5 Best Tech Stocks to Buy For The Long Term

4. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 209

On March 8, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced that it will be acquiring Mandiant Inc. (NASDAQ:MNDT), a renowned cybersecurity firm, for $23.00 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion. After being acquired, Mandiant Inc. (NASDAQ:MNDT) is to join Google Cloud.

Piper Sandler analyst Thomas Champion shared his views on the deal and what it could mean for Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL). The analyst highlighted that the acquisition is of a strategic benefit to Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), noting that it would complement Google Cloud Platform’s current security offerings, which include BeyondCorp Enterprise and VirusTotal. The analyst reiterated a price target of $3,475 along with an Overweight rating on Alphabet inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shares.

According to Insider Monkey’s database of 924 elite hedge funds, 209 held stakes in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) by the end of the fourth quarter of 2021. The total value of these stakes was $32.34 billion, up from $28.55 billion in the preceding quarter with 195 positions. The hedge fund sentiment for Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is positive, and the stock is popular among value investors.

Vulcan Value Partners, an investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter in which it mentioned Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Here’s what the firm had to say:

“In contrast, we made a different kind of mistake about a decade ago. Google, now Alphabet, performed very well for us while we owned it. The company kept outperforming our assumptions and we kept lowering them to be conservative. “Trees do not grow to the sky.” The stock kept going up and our value grew but did not keep pace with the stock. It hit our estimate of fair value and we sold it with a nice gain, patting ourselves on the back. We kept following the company and what they actually did over the next several years was roughly double the assumptions we used to value it. Therefore, our value was too conservative, and we sold it too cheaply, missing many years of compounding. Fortunately, we experienced some volatility several years ago that allowed us to purchase Alphabet (Google) again with a margin of safety.”