Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is the world’s second-largest investment bank by revenue and is ranked 55th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. The Wall Street white-glove giant offers financing, advisory services, risk distribution, and hedging for the firm’s institutional and corporate clients. In addition, they produce some of Wall Street’s most coveted research and serve as a bellwether for the financial industry. At 24/7 Wall St., we have followed the company’s research for 15 years to bring our readers its top stock ideas.
It is always a good sign when the Goldman Sachs team starts raising price targets on Buy-rated companies. Typically, when a stock has been performing well, and its target price is increased, it usually means that analysts are optimistic about what they see six to 12 months ahead. When we see significant price increases of 10% or more, it is time to share this with our readers. Recently, the firm raised price targets on three blue-chip giants, including one of the top-performing Magnificent 7 technology leaders. In an interesting side note, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns two of the stocks we are featuring.
Why we recommend Goldman Sachs stocks
Goldman Sachs is the acknowledged leader in the investment landscape on Wall Street and worldwide. The firm’s top-notch research department continues to provide clients with the best ideas across the investment spectrum and is likely to do so for years to come.
Ally Financial
The bank with no buildings, formerly known as GMAC, offers a solid 2.75% dividend. Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY | ALLY Price Prediction) is a financial services company with the nation’s largest all-digital bank and an industry-leading auto financing business. The company serves approximately 10 million customers with deposits, securities brokerage, investment advisory services, auto financing, and insurance offerings. The company also includes a corporate finance business that offers capital for middle-market companies.
The company’s segments include:
- Automotive Finance operations
- Insurance operations
- Mortgage Finance operations
- Corporate Finance operations
The Automotive Finance operations segment provides services such as:
- Retail installment sales contracts
- Loans and operating leases
- Term loans to dealers
- Financing dealer floorplans
- Lines of credit to dealers and other services
Insurance operations is a complementary automotive-focused business offering consumer finance protection, insurance products sold primarily through the automotive dealer channel, and commercial insurance products sold directly to dealers.
The Mortgage Finance operations segment includes its direct-to-consumer Ally Home mortgage offering and bulk purchases of jumbo and LMI mortgage loans from third parties. The Corporate Finance operations segment provides senior secured asset-based and leveraged cash flow loans.
The Goldman Sachs price target is lifted to $55 from $50.
Alphabet
This technology giant was one of the few additions to Berkshire Hathaway over the past year and offers a small 0.31% dividend. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) segments include Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets.
The Google Services segment includes products and services such as:
- Ads
- Android
- Chrome
- Devices
- Google Maps
- Google Play
- Search
- YouTube
The Google Cloud segment includes infrastructure and platform services, collaboration tools, and other services for enterprise customers.
Its Other Bets segment sells healthcare-related services and Internet services.
The Google Cloud provides enterprise-ready cloud services, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. Google Cloud Platform provides access to solutions such as:
- Cybersecurity
- Databases
- Analytics
- Artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, including its AI infrastructure, Vertex AI platform, and Duet AI for Google Cloud
Google Workspace includes cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for enterprises, such as Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, and more.
The Goldman Sachs price target is lifted to $375 from $330.
Applied Materials
This company is the leader in the semiconductor capital equipment arena and pays a small 0.56% dividend. Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) provides equipment, services, and software to the semiconductor, display, and related industries.
It operates in three segments:
- Semiconductor Systems
- Applied Global Services (AGS)
- Display
The Semiconductor systems segment designs, develops, manufactures, and sells a range of primarily 300 mm equipment used to fabricate semiconductor chips, also referred to as integrated circuits (ICs).
The AGS segment provides services, spares, and factory automation software to customer fabrication plants globally. The AGS segment also manufactures and sells 200 mm and other equipment.
The Display segment comprises primarily products for manufacturing liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and other display technologies for televisions, monitors, laptops, personal computers (PCs), tablets, smartphones, and other consumer-oriented devices.
Goldman Sachs raised its $250 target price to $310.
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