Third Point's AI Focus Pays Off As Investments in Alphabet and TSMC Propel Q1 Growth

Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co TSM, and London Stock Exchange Group saw increased investments from Third Point LLC due to their AI-driven opportunities. 

Daniel Loeb, founder and CEO, highlighted its significant distribution and technological edge over competitors. In his investor letter, Loeb praised Alphabet’s ability to leverage AI to improve and monetize its product suite. 

Additionally, Third Point increased its stakes in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and London Stock Exchange Group, which were attracted by AI-driven opportunities, Bloomberg reports.

Despite underperforming the broader market, with a 7.8% gain compared to the S&P 500’s nearly 11% return, Third Point’s flagship fund reported solid results for the first quarter, buoyed by strong performances from major tech stocks such as Meta Platforms Inc META and Amazon.com Inc AMZN. 

Loeb noted that the technological shift favors established companies investing heavily to dominate the AI landscape. 

This trend was mirrored by other hedge funds like David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, which also fell short of the S&P 500 with a 4.9% return.

Last week, Alphabet reported first-quarter revenue growth of 15% year-over-year to $80.539 billion, beating the analyst consensus estimate of $78.594 billion. The company reported EPS of $1.89, beating analyst consensus estimate of $1.51. Google Cloud revenue totaled $9.574 billion.

The board authorized an additional share repurchase program of up to $70 billion and announced its first-ever quarterly dividend per share of $0.20.

In April, TSMC reported first-quarter revenue growth of 16.5% to $18.87 billion, surpassing the Street consensus estimate of $18.40 billion. Advanced technologies accounted for 65% of TSMC’s total revenue. 

Recent reports indicated that tech giants Microsoft Corp MSFT, Meta, and Alphabet invested over $32 billion in AI infrastructure in the first quarter alone.

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Illustration created using artificial intelligence via DALL-E