Is Alphabet (GOOG) a Smart Long-Term Investment?

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Large Cap Value Strategy” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The ClearBridge Large Cap Value Strategy underperformed its Russell 1000 Value Index benchmark during the first quarter. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains in four of the 11 sectors in which it was invested for the quarter. The strongest contributions came from the energy, utilities, and health care sectors. The information technology (IT), materials, and consumer discretionary sectors were the main detractors. Try to spend some time taking a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to be informed about their best picks for 2022.

In its Q1 2022 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments Large Cap Value Strategy mentioned Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 2015, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)  is a Mountain View, California-based multinational technology conglomerate holding company with a $1.6 trillion market capitalization. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered a -12.04% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 10.82%. The stock closed at $2,545.06 per share on April 14, 2022.

Here is what ClearBridge Investments Large Cap Value Strategy has to say about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:

“Additionally, we added to our position in Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), whose valuation we found attractive amid the market selloff early in the quarter, particularly given its dominant position in search, its scaling opportunities in cloud services, and its relative insulation from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s privacy initiatives, which do not affect Alphabet’s core search business the way they do other large tech platforms.”

Photo by Kai Wenzel on Unsplash

Our calculations show that Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was in 158 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 156 funds in the previous quarter. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered a -8.54% return in the past 3 months.

In March 2022, we published an article that includes Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q1 page.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.