It's been a busy seven weeks for Wall Street. President Donald Trump unveiled his tariff policy, paused higher "reciprocal tariffs" for 90 days a week later, and recently worked out a reciprocal tariff rate reduction with China. All the while, earnings season has been ongoing and U.S. economic data has been streaming in on a near-daily basis.
Amid this flurry of data, you might have missed what can be described as the most important of all data releases: Form 13F filings.
A 13F provides a snapshot of which stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management purchased and sold in the most recent quarter. May 15 was the filing deadline to report trading activity for the first quarter of 2025.
Although 13Fs aren't perfect -- since they're filed up to 45 days after the end to a quarter, they can present stale data for an active hedge fund -- they can clue investors into which stocks and game-changing trends have the attention of top asset managers.
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It's not just billionaire money managers that are filing quarterly 13Fs
While most investors are familiar with investing greats like Warren Buffett, they might not realize that some of America's biggest companies are investors, too.
For example, Alphabet (GOOGL 0.09%) (GOOG 0.03%) is probably best-known as being the parent of internet search engine Google. In April, Google accounted for a monopoly like 89.66% share of worldwide internet search. Maintaining an 89% to 93% share of internet search, dating back more than a decade, affords Alphabet's foundational operating segment quite a bit of ad-pricing power.
Investors are probably also familiar with Alphabet's cloud infrastructure service platform, Google Cloud, which is the No. 3 cloud infrastructure service platform in the world, in terms of customer spend, based on estimates from Canalys. Cloud service margins are typically much higher than advertising margins, and the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into Google Cloud has the potential to accelerate growth for this segment.
But you might not realize that Alphabet is also an active investor. The company's investment arm ended the March quarter with $1.58 billion invested across 40 holdings. Many of these holdings are businesses Alphabet has partnered with or is jointly working with on one or more products.
During the first quarter of 2025, Alphabet absolutely piled into a moonshot stock that's gained 562% over the trailing-12-month period, and continued selling a powerful AI stock that once upon a time was one of its largest holdings.
Space: The final frontier for broadband cellular service
Alphabet's 13F shows that no existing positions, as of Dec. 31, 2024, were added to in the March-ended quarter. However, three new stocks were introduced to its portfolio -- none of which stands out more than AST SpaceMobile (ASTS 2.68%). Alphabet purchased 8,943,486 shares of AST SpaceMobile, which made this new portfolio entrant its third-largest holding (roughly 12.9% of Alphabet's invested assets).
AST SpaceMobile's purpose is simple: It wants to launch high-powered satellites into space to ensure cellular connectivity anywhere on the planet. What makes its plan so ambitious is that its satellites will work with existing smartphone technology. In other words, it's nothing like what Iridium Communications attempted to introduce decades ago, which required special phones. AST SpaceMobile's goal is to have 155 of its next-generation satellites providing global connectivity by 2030.
Another reason for the excitement surrounding AST SpaceMobile is that it already has a laundry list of partnerships, working contracts, and investments locked in (with Alphabet being one of its financial backers). It's hashed out agreements and understandings with north of 40 mobile network operators (MNOs), including domestic giants AT&T and Verizon Communications.
Collectively, the more than three dozen MNOs it has agreements with service more than 2.5 billion cellular customers, which means AST SpaceMobile won't have to fight for users, thanks to its partnerships.
The company's growth ramp is also eye-popping. After testing its service last year and generating just $4.42 million in sales, Wall Street's consensus has AST SpaceMobile ramping up to north of $1.3 billion in sales in 2027, and tipping the scales at $3 billion in revenue by 2028. Earnings estimates, while incredibly fluid for early stage companies, predict a push to recurring profitability at some point in 2027.
But there are also risks to this strategy. Building and launching satellites is exceptionally costly, and it's difficult to predict the expense variables of the components used to make AST SpaceMobile's satellites. While initial projections suggested each Block 2 BlueBird satellite would run around $20 million, higher material costs tied to President Trump's tariffs have pushed this estimate to a range of $21 million to $23 million per satellite, according to SpaceNews.
It's also incredibly difficult to accurately forecast growth ramps for early stage businesses with potentially game-changing technologies. Though it's being priced as a future success, with a nearly $8.8 billion market cap, sizable near-term losses and potentially dilutive share offerings could weigh on investors.
Image source: Getty Images.
Wall Street's premier cybersecurity stock is nearly given the heave-ho
On the other end of the spectrum, Alphabet was a seller of a handful of stocks during the first quarter. Arguably none of these is more prominent than AI-driven cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD -1.34%).
When 2023 came to a close, Alphabet held 1,283,683 shares of CrowdStrike stock, which made it the second-largest holding by market value in its portfolio. During the first quarter of 2025, Alphabet slashed its stake in CrowdStrike by 353,665 shares (83% from the sequential quarter) to just 74,230 shares. In just five quarters (15 months), 94% of this once-mighty position has been sold off.
There look to be three possible reasons behind this persistent selling activity. First, Alphabet could simply be locking in profits. When Google's parent initially built up this position in late 2022 and early 2023, CrowdStrike stock was valued in the low $100s. Much of Alphabet's selling has occurred with CrowdStrike stock solidly in the $300 to $400 range.
Valuation is a secondary concern. If CrowdStrike was to meet Wall Street's consensus of $4.79 billion in the current fiscal year, representing 21% year-over-year growth, it would have a price-to-sales ratio of almost 23. Further, it's trading at 127 times forecast earnings per share this year. This type of premium leaves no room for error.
The third catalyst behind this selling might be related to CrowdStrike's faulty update to its Falcon security platform in July 2024, which caused update errors for computers worldwide using the Windows operating system. Though CrowdStrike resolved the mess it created, there's always the potential for short-term customer retention issues.
On the bright side, cybersecurity has evolved into something of a basic necessity. With businesses shifting their data and that of their customers online and into the cloud, the onus of protecting this information is frequently falling to third-party providers like CrowdStrike.
Additionally, CrowdStrike's customers have been rapidly expanding their usage of multiple services. When CrowdStrike's fiscal 2025 came to a close on Jan. 31, 2025, nearly half of its customers had adopted at least six cloud subscription modules. The company's subscription-based model has led to an adjusted subscription margin of 80%!
Though it could take some time for CrowdStrike to grow into its current valuation, the company's long-term future remains bright.
