Mormon Church’s 5 Biggest Stock Positions

4. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) 

Ensign Peak Advisors upped its stake in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) by 1% in the September quarter, ending the period with a whopping $991 million stake in the search engine company. On January 6, Alphabet shares jumped after Tigress Financial reiterated its Strong Buy rating for Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL). The firm’s analyst Ivan Feinseth is bullish on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) due to its strengths in search and Cloud. The analyst is also bullish on Alphabet’s AI investments.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is the third most popular stock among elite hedge funds. A total of 196 funds have stakes in the search engine giant, as of the end of the third quarter.

LVS Advisory made the following comment about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:

“We sold our remaining shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in the quarter, taking a profit. Google was a day 1 holding for the Growth Portfolio and it has performed well.

18 years after its initial public offering, Google is showing signs of business maturity. During the 2008/2009 recession, Google’s business was able to power through with double digit growth. As of Q3 2022, Google’s core search business has decelerated to low single digit growth and the YouTube and display network businesses reported revenue decline. At the same time, the company’s spending is outpacing the rate of expected revenue growth. Advertising spend is cyclical and the digital advertising industry is fragmenting as many major consumer platforms are scrambling to turn on new streams of revenue (Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, etc.).

My best guess is that Google’s financial results could be quite disappointing, and my estimates are far below what Wall Street analysts are currently modeling. I do not make sell decisions purely based on near term results expectations as they are generally priced into the stock but my downbeat assumptions for Google come at a time when we are finding more value in other areas of the market that we would prefer to allocate to.”