Ca$htag$: GOOGL Surges on Exploding Cloud Growth

Hinzugefügt: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]Well, time now for our cash tag segment.

[00:00:01]For that, let's bring in our next guest.

[00:00:03]We've got Landon Swan, co-founder of Likefolio, joining us to take a look at Alphabet Google ahead of its results with the latest sentiment data. Listen, uh, this stock has been the strongest of the strong uh, even as you see some of the mag seven kind of drift or become the me seven as some of them are called, but Alberta Google still been holding in there. What does your latest data look like, Landon?

[00:00:25]>> Yeah, it's it's incredible. I mean, I think they hit the the high today, right? 35579.

[00:00:30]So, um, off of that a little bit obviously, but still, uh, very strong performance from the stock. And this is all coming off of the the heels of, you know, everyone including myself saying that AI is going to crush search. And I think the one thing that analysts and and experts didn't really take into account is distribution. Um, you know, you've got Google has the platform where people are used to going. They've got Gemini. They can plug it in. Um, and yeah, there's a bounce between which AI is the best. You know, for a while, Anthropic had it. I think OpenAI may be retaking the reigns. Uh, but it's it's going back and forth and I think the everyday user is not switching, you know, back and forth as maybe some of the other people are in development, things like that. So, um, it is uh, you know, they've got the distribution and they're showing that they're kind of flexing that. Um, even if you look at you YouTube, I mean, their ads last re last quarter were up 9% on a year-over-year basis. The company's got over 300 million paid subscribers to YouTube, Google One, etc. Um, and so, you know, they're doing a lot of things right, and and frankly, the data that we've got is showing them continuing to exhibit strength, not just in search, which is strong, uh, consumer sentiment and YouTube, things like that, strong, but also, I think one of the big ones is in cloud. Um, you know, their their cloud program is is growing very quickly. Um, up about 20 points on a year-over-year basis. You can see a AWS is up six and and Microsoft is the one that's really struggling and I think you can look at their stock price and kind of see um, you know, how investors are reacting to that. But that is a significant move. You know, AWS has always been the clear leader, but um, Google's doing a great job. Their their spending is very high. I think they're looking to over double last year's spending this year, which is a bit of a concern for investors, but they're showing a lot of, you know, they're showing a lot of benefits for that. The revenue on cloud computing was up 48% uh over last quarter. The quarter before that it was only 35. So, they're continuing to move the needle in the right direction. Their margins are up 30%. So, this is a you know, this is an expensive business, a lot of capex, but they're showing that the returns are real and and that they're delivering to consumers. So everything that we've got unfortunately is pretty bullish on Google. I say unfortunately because the stock is so high. Um you know it's hard to take a contrarian bet here. I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily want to go bearish just because the stock is high because all the data that we've got is pretty bullish. And so um you know it it kind of washes out to a degree, but actually when you look um all the way through our data and account for everything, we've actually got a slight bullish lean going into this one. I do like that they're coming off those highs a little bit. So maybe there's a little bit more room to the upside. Um but but yeah, the data that we've got pretty much bullish across the board. All of their segments are strong. Um and and again, it's it's a matter of I think people jump the gun on AI crushing search too quickly because, you know, we forget about distribution. It distribution is absolutely the king. uh and everybody goes to google.com to search for things that they want and now maybe they're just using Gemini on that instead um you know irregardless of whether or not uh regardless of whether or not OpenAI is better or Claude's better or whatever it might be Gemini is good enough right now and so they're winning that battle.

[00:03:47]>> Yeah, the death of Surge. We talked about this about a year ago uh when this stock was actually it started to fall before we had the overall market slide in uh in April of last year. I mean the stock was down uh the first three months of the year because of potential for uh search getting taken away. That never happened. We talked about it repeatedly.

[00:04:08]But Landon, you know what, you looked at everything uh you know the stocks at or near all-time highs in today's session.

[00:04:14]Uh it's getting overbought on a technical basis. that growth rate on cloud. You mentioned that, you know, I see that your data is they're beating the the pants off of their competitors.

[00:04:24]Maybe AWS just because of the size of it. Uh it's harder to grow uh at that pace, but they're expected to have after a 48% growth year-over-year last quarter. Now, it's supposed to be above 50%. Are we getting to metrics that are just like going to start topping out here, Landon? Because this was the cheapest stock out of the MAG7s a year ago. Now it's getting up in the middle of the road towards uh the upper end of uh valuations at this point, >> right? Isn't that funny how free markets work? Like everybody sees them as cheap so they pile in and now they're expensive. I love it. Uh but yeah, I mean eventually you either get to unsustainable numbers or your conviction about the growth is confirmed. Right.

[00:05:05]It's one of those two and that's what you're betting on is can they continue to grow and I think that you know like you said yes on the chart it's plus 20 versus plus 6 Google versus Amazon but Amazon has been around longer the they're the dominant player so it's much harder for them to put up like a plus 20 number in our data um obviously but the fact that they are a smaller piece of the pie alphabet they are smaller piece of the pie there's a lot more room for growth not only taking market share but also this pie is getting larger and larger. Um, as more and more companies continue to build out their their infrastructure, not just AI, but just technology in general, it's just going to continue to grow the size of that pie. So, they can they can increase, AWS can increase, Azure can turn around and increase, they can all three increase at the same time. Uh, now right now it just so happens that that Google cloud is moving at the fastest pace. So, I you know, I do think that there's a concern with investors like is this growth assumption a little bit too accelerated?

[00:06:04]Is it too much? And of course, that's what earnings reports are to tell us whether or not those those assumptions are unfounded or not. My take on it is is that I think that they're going to be able to hit at least this quarter. Um I think that the numbers are going to continue to come in strong and then it's just a question of, you know, okay, are we 48? Are we 50? You know, where are we guiding towards? Is is the price is $350 a share justified? Um those are all, you know, questions that investors are going to have to answer themselves and we'll see what the reaction is. But as as far as our data goes, everything that we've got from search to YouTube to cloud uh points us in the direction that things are going well at at uh Alphabet and we expect a good number out of them. Um and so then it's just what is the reaction at these very very high prices. So um we're slightly leaning bullish. I think that there's more upside and again I' I'd much rather see the market, you know, them close at 345 or 347 today than 355. that gives you a little, you know, just a two or three points away to get that bump to the upside rather than closing at all-time highs. So, we'll see. But overall, as you can see from, you know, this is the consumer demand data. You can see that we're we're pretty bullish the data is. I just wish the stock was down a little bit more.

[00:07:15]Give us more room to the upside.

[00:07:17]>> Okay. So, is that the reason you're only slightly bullish? Like I want to hear a little bit more about like why slightly bullish? Is it because of where price is right now or is it also because of just being able to meet that mark given it's a potentially a higher bar in front of it for Alphabet Google and then there's obviously the questions around capex right is it justified for them it seems to be justified um margins that seems to be critical as well what's your I guess your hesitation around why it's slightly bullish >> yeah I think a lot of investors are looking at capex and and saying that I do yeah I agree I think this is justified look at how fast cloud is growing. Look at the margin growth up 30%. So I think that that one is is a it's a concern when you double spending but it's also like yeah but it looks like it's working. So I think the main hesitation is both the investor expectations and the stock price which really are go they go hand in hand. I mean if an investor is bullish they buy the stock that forces it up. You know, this is, and everyone knows this, this is basic uh price fundamentals, but the higher the stock is, the more bullish investors are, so the higher expectations are. Uh, and so I again, I'd love to see just a little bit of selling on on Google specific alphabet, excuse me, specifically in the last few hours to to get it down to have some more room to the upside. Uh, but, you know, the data is what the data is as far as ours goes. And it's it's bullish across the board. So really it's just a question of can they meet these inflated investor expectations? I think they can.

[00:08:46]What's the reaction on uh you know on the on on how the outlook looks going forward? Um and you know where does that compare to what everyone thinks is going to happen. So that's really the question I think the stock price is telling us, hey the bar is really high. Um and then our data is saying hey they're doing really well. Um, and so right now with us, the math comes out to be plus 23 out of 100. We're slightly bullish. 20 is our cutoff. So, you know, you could you could talk me into a neutral play, you could talk me into a bullish play. I think bullish is the way to go. Um, but yeah, it's all about that investor expectation being so high, which is shown by the price.

[00:09:23]>> All right. Thank you, Landon. And that is Landon Swan, co-founder of Likefolio with the latest data on Alphabet Google.