Technology
5 Goldman Sachs Conviction List Tech Stocks Are Solid Q4 Buys
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With the third quarter ending, and the final three months of 2018 now in view, many investors are resetting for what could be a more volatile quarter as the midterm elections and ongoing trade issues could stir the pot. One thing is certain, it makes sense to stick with large-cap leaders, especially in sectors like technology, for the rest of 2018 and into 2019.
One of Wall Street’s most respected collections of stocks is the Goldman Sachs Conviction List. These are the firm’s top picks for high net worth and institutional accounts spread across 10 sectors. We screened the list for the technology companies currently residing on it. Then we looked for the large-cap names that Goldman Sachs prefers. These five that look like outstanding choices for investors.
Alphabet
The search giant continues to expand and, while search is king, the cloud presence is growing fast. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is a global technology company focused on key areas, such as search, advertising, operating systems and platforms, enterprise and hardware products. It generates revenue primarily by delivering online advertising and by selling apps and contents on Google Play, as well as hardware products. The company provides its products and services in more than 100 languages and in 190 countries, regions and territories.
Alphabet offers performance and brand advertising services. It operates through Google and Other Bets segments. The Google segment includes principal internet products, such as Search, Ads, Commerce, Maps, YouTube, Apps, Cloud, Android, Chrome and Google Play, as well as technical infrastructure and newer efforts, such as virtual reality.
The company blew out the latest earnings numbers, and with a wide and bountiful silo of products and services, the stock remains almost unchallenged. It should be noted that traffic acquisition cost relief drove 20% gross profit growth, despite heavy cloud infrastructure and YouTube content investment.
At a recent conference, Google outlined expanding capabilities to facilitate commerce, capitalizing on the “treasure trove” of data provided by seven different properties, each with at least a billion active users (Android, Search, Chrome, Maps, Play, YouTube and Gmail). Smart shopping campaigns leverage machine learning to make sense of touch points along the consumer purchase path, including better offline attribution capabilities (locally oriented searches up 200% over past two years) and improved purchase conversion rates (20% on average).
The Goldman Sachs price target for the stock is $1,450, and the Wall Street consensus target is $1,385.10. The shares closed Thursday trading at $1,207.36.
Amazon
This is the absolute leader in online retail and a dominant player in cloud storage business, and it remains the top pick on Wall Street. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) serves consumers through retail websites that primarily include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers.
The company serves developers and enterprises through Amazon Web Services, which provides computing, storage, database, analytics, applications and deployment services that enable virtually various businesses. AWS is also the undisputed leader in the cloud now, and many top analysts see the company expanding and moving up the enterprise information value chain and targeting a larger total addressable market.
Consistent with data from earlier in 2018, digital marketing users overwhelmingly cited Amazon as the fastest-growing channel for advertising budgets, while many retailers are also leveraging their Amazon advertising data to retarget users on other channels (namely Facebook) to drive traffic/ sales to their own websites (bypassing Amazon marketplace/FBA fees).
Goldman Sachs has a $2,300 price target, and the consensus target is $2,123.77. The stock closed on Thursday at $2,012.98.
Cisco
This top mega-cap technology company recently reported an outstanding quarter. Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) designs, manufactures and sells internet protocol (IP) based networking products and services related to the communications and information technology industry worldwide.
It provides switching products, including fixed-configuration and modular switches, and storage products that provide connectivity to end users, workstations, IP phones, wireless access points and servers, as well as next-generation network routing products that interconnect public and private wireline and mobile networks for mobile, data, voice and video applications.
Cisco reported a 4.4% rise in quarterly revenue, more than expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters, and it was its second straight quarterly rise, driven by strong growth in its newer businesses, such as security. The company’s net income of $2.69 billion, or $0.56 per share, in the fiscal third quarter ended April 28 was higher year over year as well. Toss in a massive $25 billion share buyback plan and investors should be well rewarded going forward.
Shareholders receive a 2.73% dividend. The $56 Goldman Sachs target price compares with the $51.08 consensus estimate. The stock closed Thursday at $48.33.
Oracle
This top software stock has had a very difficult year but offers a very good entry point. Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) develops, manufactures, markets, sells, hosts and supports database and middleware software, application software, cloud infrastructure, hardware systems and related services worldwide.
The company licenses its Oracle Database software to customers, which is designed to enable reliable and secure storage, retrieval and manipulation of various forms of data. Its Oracle Fusion Middleware software aims to build, deploy, secure, access and integrate business applications, as well as automate their business processes.
Shareholders receive a 1.47% dividend. The Goldman Sachs price objective is $55. The consensus price target is $53, and the stock closed Thursday at $51.69.
24/7 Wall St.PayPal
This stock has long been a Goldman Sachs and Wall Street favorite. PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) is a global, technology-driven payment platform with greater than 210 million direct customer relationships in more than 200 countries. PayPal empowers a streamlined digital and mobile payment experience in-browser, on mobile devices and in-app. It is accepted at more than 75% of the largest 100 internet retailers.
PayPal enables businesses of various sizes to accept payments from merchant websites, mobile devices and applications, as well as at offline retail locations through a range of payment solutions across company’s payments platform, including PayPal, PayPal Credit, Venmo and Braintree products.
The company is still ramping Venmo monetization, which has developed slower than some previously anticipated and is now expected to gradually flow through the model. Material changes in the model are approaching: U.S. consumer credit portfolio comes off next quarter and the eBay contract is expiring mid-2020. Most on Wall Street believe the company has sufficient levers to deliver toward its three-year to five-year target of 17% or so revenue growth.
Goldman Sachs has set its price objective at $98. The consensus target price is $97.27, and shares closed on Thursday at $88.99.
These five large-cap leaders that made the Goldman Sachs Conviction List all make good sense for more aggressive growth stock accounts, as all are leaders in their respective technology silos. With earnings on the way, it may make sense to buy partial positions here and see how the results come in.
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