While it might sound like a smart idea to try and find small businesses that could become tomorrow's big winners in the stock market, investors can't ignore the companies that are hiding in plain sight.
Just look at Alphabet (GOOGL +3.61%) (GOOG +3.52%). The tech titan's shares have soared 190% just in the past five years, far outpacing the broader Nasdaq Composite Index. But I don't think it's done rewarding shareholders.
Where will Alphabet be in five years?
Still dominating the ad industry
Most readers are familiar with Alphabet as a business that's essentially the gateway to the internet. The company owns and operates Google Search, a monopoly service that is the single most popular website on planet Earth. Its wide reach has made Alphabet the perennial leader in the digital-ad industry. According to Visible Alpha, the company commands about 40% of global-market share.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), primarily the massive amounts of capital being invested in this revolutionary technology, is something I'm sure spooks Alphabet shareholders. The fear is that Google Search's dominance will diminish as users change their search habits. So far, there isn't anything to worry about.
Growth engines
Besides the bread-and-butter search business, which has made Alphabet one of the world's most successful enterprises, there are other growth vectors that investors can't ignore. In five years, they might actually have a greater influence on Alphabet's financial performance.
The company has a huge player in the streaming wars with YouTube, which is estimated to have 2.5 billion monthly active users. According to Nielsen, it commands more TV viewing time in the U.S. than Netflix. This helps bring in even more ad revenue.
Google Cloud continues to demonstrate its phenomenal growth trajectory. Its revenue jumped 28% in the first quarter. And in 2023, this segment raked in $1.7 billion of operating profit.
As it scales up and generates more revenue, there's no reason to believe its operating margin can't approach 30%, which is where industry leader Amazon Web Services is currently at. Therefore, I'd be shocked if in 2029, more of Alphabet's bottom-line performance didn't come from the booming cloud division.
NASDAQ: GOOGL
Key Data Points
There's another potential growth engine that typically gets forgotten among all of Alphabet's other thriving segments. It's a wild card, as there is such a wide range of outcomes as to how things will ultimately play out down the road.
I'm talking about Waymo. This is undoubtedly one of the few leaders working to bring full autonomous driving to the masses.
Here's the bottom line: Waymo is a rounding error to Alphabet's overall financials at this point. However, if it can really make good on its ultimate goal of bringing full self-driving capabilities to cars everywhere, then Alphabet can become a top provider of automobile software. This could be an extremely large and high-margin business.
But it's hard to know what the probability of success is. Nonetheless, investors have a lot to still be encouraged by when looking at Alphabet as a whole.
Reasonable valuation
I find it remarkable that even after shares have been a big winner in the past, they don't look expensive today. The stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.4. That's a below-market multiple (compared to the Nasdaq 100 Index) for one of the best businesses the world has ever seen.
According to Wall Street consensus-analyst estimates, Alphabet is projected to grow its revenue and diluted-earnings per share at 11.4% and 19.2%, respectively, over the next three years. It's easy to believe that these double-digit gains can continue even further out than that.
If we look out five years, I'll be surprised if Alphabet doesn't continue rewarding its shareholders with returns that outperform the broader market.
