Podcast with Motley Fool: Big Tech Plus the 1 Stock I’d Buy Right Now

I had the privilege of joining Tim Beyers and Brian Feroldi on The Motley Fool podcast earlier this month.  In the hour-long interview, we cover topics such as big tech, my research process, tech valuations, and we also cover a number of individual stocks including Twilio, Bandwidth, Zoom, Facebook, and Palantir.

The discussion starts off with big tech and why I believe Google Cloud Platform has missed an opportunity to catch up to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services on cloud IaaS. With that said, all three players are aggressively pursuing edge computing and how to combine the compute and storage from hypescalers with the low latency and speed offered by 5G connectivity. This is primarily being accomplished through partnerships between the hyperscalers and telecoms which are best described as “frenemies.”

Later in the interview, we dive into my research process and how I go about finding the top tech stocks.  One example of a trend that I think the market is misunderstanding is telehealth. The market is pricing the opportunity as a covid tailwind rather than pricing and evaluating the opportunity for early innings – especially as AI will merge with telehealth in the near future.

We also chat about what’s on everyone’s mind – which is whether tech valuations are in a bubble right now. I give some guidelines on what I consider to be attractive valuations versus unattractive valuations in the tech space and I break this down by annual revenue growth rates. 

Towards the end of the interview, they ask what is the one stock I’d buy right now and the one stock I’d sell right now. My answers include a lesser-known stock in the OTT advertising space that I am bullish on.

You can access my full interview with the Motley Fool podcast below

Access the interview here:

Interview timestamps:

0:00 – Introduction

4:40 – Discussion on Big Tech

7:40 – Does Google (GOOGL) need Google Cloud Platform to work out for the company to do well?

13:40 – Opinion on Fastly (FSLY)

19:20 – What is your process on researching stocks?

22:40 – Is it time to start talking about Salesforce (CRM) as a big tech company?

23:00 – Discussion about Twilio (TWLO)

28:00 – Thoughts on Bandwidth (BAND)

30:00 – How much potential does Twilio (TWLO) have?

35:00 – Is tech in a bubble right now?

37:00 – Guidelines on valuations for tech stocks

38:45 – What do you consider high growth, medium growth, and low growth?

39:30 – Discussion about Zoom (ZM) and its long-term outlook post-COVID

42:30 – What does product-market fit mean?

45:45 – 1 stock to buy and 1 stock to sell

49:50 – Top public stock pick in telehealth

50:55 – What private tech investors do you like to follow?

52:20 – Current state of hybrid cloud versus multi-cloud and the future of hybrid cloud

53:20 – Discussion about Datadog (DDOG) and the partnership with Microsoft Azure

56:40 – Thoughts on Palantir (PLTR)