The cloud market has grown steadily over the years, with market leaders Amazon (AMZN -1.65%) and Microsoft launching their respective cloud platforms in 2006 and 2010. However, the COVID-19 pandemic substantially boosted the industry as millions of businesses and consumers moved online, adopting more hybrid work models.
According to Gartner, worldwide cloud spending hit $490.3 billion in 2022 and is forecasted to reach $591.8 billion in 2023, a growth of 20.7%. Meanwhile, figures from Grand View Research state the cloud market will continue expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 14.1% through 2030.
As a result, this month is an excellent time to invest in the high-growth cloud industry. With that said, here are three stocks to get you started.
1. Amazon
This e-commerce giant began offering cloud services on its platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) in March 2006, reaching a leading 34% market share in the industry in the third quarter of 2022. For reference, the second-largest market share went to Microsoft's Azure at 21%.
Amazon has profited significantly from the industry's growth, with AWS diversifying its revenue streams and shielding it from temporary economic headwinds. For instance, in fiscal 2022, Amazon's e-commerce segment reported a total of $10.6 billion in operating losses, suffering from macroeconomic declines and reductions in consumer spending. However, AWS' $22.8 billion in operating income kept the company profitable.
Additionally, AWS continues to report substantial growth, with the segment's revenue increasing 28.8% to $80.1 billion in 2022.
Moreover, a recent boom in artificial intelligence (AI) has made Amazon's leading cloud market share more attractive. AI is being integrated into more and more cloud services across the industry, with Amazon's related offerings including tools to build AI chatbots, speech recognition, data extraction, image analysis, and more. The wide use of AWS could see it push the mass adoption of AI services as its business expands.
As a result, Amazon is a must-buy cloud stock this March.
2. Advanced Micro Devices
While Amazon is a great way to invest in the software aspect of cloud computing, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 1.33%) gives you the opportunity to invest in the hardware necessary for the industry's growth.
AMD is a prominent name in data processing thanks to its powerful graphic processing units and processors, which have seen it partner with cloud giants like AWS, Alphabet's (GOOG -1.96%) (GOOGL -1.97%) Google, Azure, and Oracle. Data centers run the cloud, making AMD crucial to the market's development.
In 2022, AMD's data center segment brought in the most revenue, hitting $6.04 billion and rising 64% year over year. Meanwhile, its operating income increased by 81.6% to $1.8 billion.
Additionally, AMD has recently taken promising strides in the market with its Genoa series data processing chips, released in November 2022. AMD's chips launched ahead of Intel's competing versions, the Sapphire Rapids server chips, which suffered two years of delays. Meanwhile, benchmarks have shown that AMD's Genoa chips are outperforming Intel's new offerings. The success could create more anticipation for the company's more powerful Genoa-X chips releasing later this year.
AMD has a solid position in the cloud market with its data center hardware, making its stock a great way to invest in the booming industry.
3. Alphabet
Alphabet's Google Cloud platform first launched in April 2008 and has so far achieved the third-largest market share in cloud computing at 11%.
However, the company has recently enjoyed the most cloud revenue growth among its biggest competitors. In Q4 2022, Google Cloud revenue rose 32% year over year to $7.3 billion. In the same quarter, AWS reported revenue growth of 20%, while Microsoft's intelligent cloud revenue grew by 22% year over year. As a result, Alphabet may not be the absolute biggest name in cloud computing, but its swift growth could see it steal market share over the long term as it expands its reach.
With potent brands such as YouTube, Android, and the many services associated with Google, Alphabet has a good shot at attracting more users to its cloud services, thanks to the familiarity of its name and design language.
Additionally, Alphabet is by far the best-value stock in this list.
Data by YCharts
Looking at the chart above, Alphabet's price-to-earnings ratio is significantly lower than Amazon's and AMD's, meaning its stock price is more in line with its current financial standing. So, Alphabet is another great option to invest in cloud computing this March.
