Irnest Kaplan is the founder and chief executive of Kaplan Equity Analysts. He joined the BizNews Power Hour to share his insights on the recent Microsoft and Alphabet results. Host Alec Hogg also asks Kaplan whether we should be paying any attention to US President Joe Biden’s Antitrust potential enforcement against Big Tech. “I just get the sense that the US, at this point, is that I don’t think they would cripple their top companies.” – Jarryd Neves
Irnest Kaplan on the reaction to Microsoft and Alphabet results:
When one tries to look at the reaction of these stocks on a daily basis – especially around earnings time – I think they go a little bit crazy, because in the week before the earnings come out, you get a lot of updates and things like that. The share moves a lot and then, on the day of the results, you get a lot of people that say, “we’re going to take our profits and off we go.”
I think a lot of longer-term shareholders look at these movements and say, “but how on earth could the share go down if the results were so good?” From my side, looking at it from a long-term perspective, I think the results of Alphabet, Google and Microsoft are certainly on track for long-term shareholders. I don’t think there’s anything in their results that people would be upset about.
On the antitrust potential coming out of the Biden administration:
I’m not an expert in that and I’m not going to claim to know what the outcome of that would be. I just get the sense that the US, at this point – my feeling personally – is I don’t think they would cripple all the their top companies. If you look at the big companies that we’re are talking about here – Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook – these are pretty much the largest companies in the world. They impact on the global scene. I think that there is a case to regulate certain aspects of them. But I can’t see them crushing them totally. That’s just my personal view.
On Microsoft:
If you look at Microsoft and you go back a few weeks. There were at 220 and they went up to 260 over the last month. A lot of that’s kind of baked in – maybe a little bit too much. Now, it kind of comes off a few percent. I think one’s got to look at these things on a longer-term basis, it’s pretty much doubled since the Covid bottom. That’s quite amazing.
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