5 Growth Stocks in Billionaire George Soros’ Portfolio

3. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 160

Soros Fund Management’s Holdings: $133,967,000

Percentage of Soros Fund Management’s Portfolio: 2.03%

Stock Price as of June 30: $2,251.43

Return since March 31: -30.7%

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a conglomerate holding company. It is the parent organization of firms like Google, YouTube and other subsidiaries.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in an expansion mode, as reflected by the company’s increasing advertising revenue which contributed 92.2% to the company’s top-line during FY21. The Mountain View, California-based tech giant, reported significant revenue growth for Google Search and other related services amongst small enterprises. Due to Google Search’s strong performance, Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) revenue saw an increase of 23% YoY to $68.01 billion in the first quarter of 2022.

Moreover, YouTube also has an absolute advantage against its competitors due to the presence of free content and the ability to add multiple advertisements in a single video. Although Google Cloud comes in as the third biggest cloud entity, it is still making constant improvements to provide a better offering to customers and increase its market share.

Here’s what Farrer Wealth Advisors said about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:

Alphabet: We won’t waste much time trying to explain to our clients why Alphabet is such a phenomenal business, we believe that is quite self-evident. The better explanation is why we never bought Alphabet before. The reason was a personal bias we held based on three beliefs (which we now believe to be incorrect)

Growth in YouTube would stall as the increased ad-load would turn-off viewers (the double ad-load at the beginning of videos for example). Consumers will focus on discovery rather than search to purchase new items. For example – using Instagram/TikTok to decide what new clothes to buy instead of ‘googling’ for clothes. Other Bets: In general, we felt that capital spent on “Other Bets” has been a bit wasteful with the segment earning just around $3.1bn in revenue versus nearly $21bn in operating losses over the last five years…” (Click here to see the full text)

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was held by 160 hedge funds as of Q1 2022.