Sometimes a business or consumer trend seems unstoppable and companies involved in it benefit significantly. If investors identify these shifts early, they can benefit massively. While there may be a few trends going on right now, the one I think investors need to pay the most attention to is cloud computing.
Cloud computing has implications that affect those from an individual developer to the largest corporation, and the shift looks unstoppable. Furthermore, while the global cloud computing market is worth around $678 billion, it's expected to rapidly expand to $2.4 trillion by 2030.
This expansion makes cloud computing a must-invest industry. So if you're interested in this exciting opportunity, read on to find out my top two picks in the space.
Cloud computing has widespread use across many industries
The basis of cloud computing is that a company purchases a lot of computing power, and clients can rent out some of this computing power for a specific task. This can be incredibly useful when gathering data from a website, processing intense calculations, or storing vast amounts of information. The need for cloud computing has become even clearer with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), as these models require large datasets and significant computing power to create them.
Because cloud servers are hosted in the owner's building offsite, businesses don't need to spend their resources on costly real estate. This allows clients to run an asset-light business model, which allows the company to be more agile in its strategy.
When investing in the space, there are hardware providers and real estate developers, but my two picks come from the provider side: Amazon (AMZN 0.75%) and Alphabet (GOOG -3.33%) (GOOGL -3.37%).
Amazon and Alphabet are facing separate challenges
Amazon was one of the first companies to market with a cloud computing product and benefited from being the first mover. As a result, it holds the largest market share in the cloud computing market, with an estimated 32%, according to Synergy Research Group. However, because businesses have rapidly expanded their cloud computing usage, many are cutting back and trying to optimize what they have before purchasing more.
That's why Amazon Web Services (AWS) hasn't been growing as rapidly (it only rose 12% in Q2) and operating income has been shrinking (it fell 6%). But this is only a temporary trend and is heavily influenced by economic outlook.
Alphabet's Google Cloud is quite a bit different from AWS. It was a bit late to the party, launching its cloud computing service after Amazon. However, it also has some fundamental differences that can make AWS a more desirable product in some situations.
That said, Google Cloud excels in others, as it claims 70% of generative AI unicorns (private companies with a $1 billion or greater valuation) utilize Google Cloud. Still, Google Cloud only holds an 11% market share, good enough for third place.
Google Cloud hasn't seen the same slowdown as AWS, as its revenue increased by 28% in Q2. It's also becoming profitable and has drastically improved its operating margins every quarter over the past year. With just a 5% operating margin, it has a lot of room to expand.
Regardless of how these two are doing now, that $2.4 trillion market opportunity by 2030 is what I have my eye on. That represents a 20% compounded annual growth (CAGR) opportunity. Finding a large CAGR for that long is extremely rare, but cloud computing represents that opportunity.
As a result, I think investors need some exposure to this industry, and Amazon and Alphabet are two of the best investments to make.
