5 Cash-Rich Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds

4. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Latest Cash and Short-Term Investments: $119.94 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 221

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), based in Mountain View, California, is the parent company of several companies including Google, Verily Life Sciences, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Calico, and X-the moonshot factory. Majority of its revenue is generated by Google Services which comprises of ads, Android, Chrome, hardware, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube.

On October 24, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) released financial results for the three months ended September 30. Its revenues increased by 11% y-o-y to $76.7 billion while net income surged by 42% y-o-y to $19.7 billion.

Following the earnings release, Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein reiterated an ‘Outperform’ rating for Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shares with a price target of $160 per share.

This is what Wedgewood Partners, an investment management company, had to say about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in its Q3 2023 investor letter:

“Alphabet was a top contributor to performance as search revenues accelerated during their second quarter. This improved performance flies in the face of fears that demand for the Company’s advertising inventory and core search functionality would be diluted by the Company’s own generative-AI offerings and outside substitutes. Alphabet subsidiaries have been at the vanguard of artificial intelligence for more than a decade. The Company has spent almost $150 billion on research and development over just the past five years, and today over 80% of the Company’s advertising customers use an AI-enabled tool when they run their Google Search and YouTube campaigns. Thus, Alphabet is certainly not “behind the curve” in any way, shape, or form when it comes to AI. Quite the contrary, the Company has ample room to rationalize spending to drive better returns on investments and increase capital returns to shareholders at these relatively attractive forward earnings multiples.”