5 Safe Stocks To Invest in For The Long Term in 2022

3. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 158

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is the parent company of Google and its related platforms. With a market cap of  $1.86 trillion, it is one of the most successful companies in the world. In late March, Times Magazine released its list of ‘100 Most Influential Companies In The World’ for 2022, and not surprisingly Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranked among the list.

On March 10, Deutsche Bank analyst Ben Black initiated coverage of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) with a ‘Buy’ rating and a price target of $3,150. He noted that the company is a structural winner from the secular trend of commerce and services shifting from physical venues to digital store mediums, and sees the firm perfectly positioned to benefit from the growing importance of e-commerce within global retail.

For the fourth quarter, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) posted revenue of $75.33 billion, which showed an increase of 32.39% year-on-year and beat estimates by $3.50 billion. EPS was recorded at $30.69, outperforming analysts’ estimates by $3.41. As of April 1, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has seen its share price soar 26.44% in the last 12 months, and 5.18% in the last 6 months.

Popular hedge funds held major stakes in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) during the fourth quarter of 2021. In total, 158 hedge funds were bullish on the company shares, as opposed to 156 in the previous quarter. TCI Fund Management was the top shareholder of the tech firm over the fourth quarter, with a $8.54 billion stake consisting of 2.95 million shares.

Vulcan Value Partners, an investment firm, gave its views regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q4 2021 investor letter. The fund said:

“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.”