Billionaire Lee Cooperman’s Favorite Stocks Heading Into 2021

3. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the third-largest stock holding of Omega Advisors. It is one of the billionaire Lee Cooperman’s favorite stocks heading into 2021 because the legendary investor bought 60,000 shares of Alphabet in the latest quarter.

Shares of Alphabet soared almost 29% in the last twelve months, extending the five years gains to 126%. Although the internet company underperformed this year compared to other FAANG stocks, the market analysts expect upside ahead amid prospects for recovery in the pandemic hit businesses – which will enhance its ads revenues. The company’s ad revenue from the traveling and tourism industries fell sharply this year.

Here is what Baron Opportunity Fund said recently about GOOGL:

“Considering solid Fund inflows, we added to long-term holding Alphabet Inc. to maintain its weighting in the portfolio. Alphabet is the parent company of Google, the world’s largest search and online advertising company. We increased our position in Alphabet this quarter as a protracted COVID-19-related recovery in travel and brand advertising presented an attractive buying opportunity. We are encouraged by improving trends in both search and YouTube, driven by durable tailwinds to e-commerce and local advertising, as well as the continued shift of video advertising dollars away from linear television as consumers increasingly cut the cable TV cord. We believe Google is becoming slightly more disciplined in capital allocation than it has been historically. Lastly, Google Cloud, which this quarter achieved a $12 billion revenue run rate under the leadership of Thomas Kurian, is having increasing success competing with larger vendors, due to its strengths in security, open-source, and data analytics.”