Follow-up to my MSFT/GOOGL/NVDA post earlier this week (resolution there was to keep all three but perhaps trim them some). This is part two, but will likely be the last such post for a while as I do not intend to bombard you with these types of posts (I know they might get annoying) but do value your feedback.
What are your thoughts on the long-term growth of AMZN, ADBE, and CRM? By long-term I mean for the next 5-10 years, and taking into consideration various scenarios like stagflation, recessions, or on the flip side, an economic boom if Powell can figure out inflation and Putin loses his war quickly.
My preliminary thoughts:
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AMZN: Overall, I see it as a good stock with a weakening moat. AWS is their crown jewel and will likely remain so, but they are facing increasing competition from MSFT, GOOGL and others (e.g. ORCL, IBM, but these are to a much lesser extent). E-Commerce appears to be slower growth especially given the immense costs of capex (delivery, warehouses). E-Commerce is facing increasing competition from others like TGT, WMT, and SHOP, and the first two of these are already big box stores and thus do not need to spend as much on capex to ramp up. For example, TGT/WMT offer buy and pick up services, which while not as convenient as AMZN prime, is still pretty useful (I use it sometimes). Bottom line, I fear AMZN's growth will be slower going forward, which does not bode well as its PE is also quite a bit higher than MSFT and GOOGL.
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ADBE: Its software is ubiquitous, but seems to have stalled out on growth. My favorite segment of theirs is actually the Experience Cloud, which appears unique but is having inconsistent results. Document Cloud faces heavy competition from Docusign, etc. and anyway is free for most users (Adobe Acrobat Reader) or already installed (meaning incremental revenue would have to come from fee increases and not necessarily new licenses). Creative Cloud remains good, but it is mostly focused on 2D AFAIK. If 3D imaging continues to gain steam, I see ADSK and U being better. Bottom line and as with AMZN, competition and over-saturation are issues.
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CRM: It appears quite clear that its sales platform is saturated, and it appears that even Marc Benioff knows that (hence the Tableau and Slack acquisitions). I see the Analytics Cloud as being potentially the biggest gamechanger of theirs as Tableau's competitors are rather weak and smaller companies (e.g. Alteryx). I have heard that Microsoft has a competing product called PowerBI, but I don't know exactly how it stacks up to Tableau. Not sure though if the Analytics Cloud will be enough to take CRM to significantly higher growth (e.g. 20%+ revenue growth yoy).
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