Google parent company Alphabet Inc. is a good buy right now, Christine Poole says

Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc. (Alphabet Stock Quote, Chart, News: NASDAQ:GOOGL) may be trading sideways over the past month and a half, but there’s little reason to doubt the tech giant’s prowess, especially since its search engine stands virtually peerless, says Christine Poole of GlobeInvest Capital.

A few weeks ago when Alphabet Inc. released its first quarter earnings report, the company beat estimates by posting a 26 per cent revenue increase and $9.93 EPS. That came along with US$26.6 billion in advertising revenue, up nearly 20 per cent year-over-year and $4.3 billion in its cloud and hardware businesses, up from $3.2 billion year-over-year.

And how did investors react to those glowing numbers? By pulling out and dropping GOOGL’s share price by almost five per cent in one day’s trading.

Such is the state of the tech sector, where concerns over privacy and impending regulations have either turned off investors or made them skittish, even in the face of a freight train of success like Alphabet.

But don’t worry about Google, Poole says, they’re as close to a sure bet as you can find in the ever-changing tech sector.

“In technology, it’s difficult to have a five- to ten-year view [but] it’s hard to imagine that Google won’t be that search engine that we all go to,” says Poole, CEO and managing director at GlobeInvest, to BNN Bloomberg. “I would say that I’m fairly confident about the name for the next year or two, and that’s about as far out as I can project. Technology stocks in particular, if you own the name, you do have to be watching what’s developing and what’s going around these companies if there’s something that could really disrupt what’s going on.”

In what seems to be a direct response to public concerns of late over the reach of Amazon, Facebook and Google into more and more corners of our lives, Google launched its annual I/O conference yesterday with a focus on the impact of tech on society and how companies have a role to play in effecting social change for the better.

“It’s clear technology can be a positive force, but it’s equally clear we just can’t be wide-eyed about about the innovation tech creates,” CEO Sundar Pichai said at the conference in Mountain View, California. “We feel a deep sense of responsibility about how to get this right.”

According to Bloomberg reports, the company showcased new products aimed at advancing health care, the limiting of digital device usage and in promoting trustworthy news sources.

Poole says that the public’s current unease with the tech giants has created a buying opportunity for investors.

“With the pullback in technology stocks, this is a relatively attractive entry point.,” she says. “With Google being the leading online search engine, it’s going to garner a natural share in digital advertising, which we think still has a lot of secular growth. Alphabet also has a cloud service offering that they’re growing, and they have other bets, as they call them, such as Waymo, the driverless car [where] they plan to launch something later this year.”

“So, we think it’s a good play, with relatively attractive value,” she says.