Tuesday, December 10, 2024
The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today’s Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Oracle Corporation (ORCL) and Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), as well as two micro-cap stocks, Canterbury Park Holding Corporation (CPHC) and CompX International Inc. (CIX). These research reports have been hand-picked from roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.
You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>
Alphabet shares have lagged the broader Tech sector this year (+25.3% vs. +33.1%) as well as the S&P 500 index (+25.3% vs. +28.2%), mostly reflecting regulatory uncertainty. The Zacks analyst believes that the company’s Google Cloud Platform products are benefiting from accelerated growth across AI infrastructure, enterprise AI platform Vertex and generative AI solutions. Its dominant position in the search engine market is a strong growth driver. Major search updates and removal of bad ads to enhance the search results continue to boost traffic on Google’s search engine.
However, increasing litigation issues and expenses remain concerns. Rising cloud competition from Microsoft and Amazon is a concern.
(You can read the full research report on Alphabet here >>>)
Oracle shares have outperformed the Zacks Computer – Software industry over the past year (+65.4% vs. +23.4%). The Zacks analyst believes that solid adoption of strategic cloud applications, autonomous database offerings and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and recovery in cloud revenue growth have been benefiting the company. The recent partnership with Amazon for Oracle Database@AWS and general availability of Oracle Database@Google bodes well.
Yet, higher spending on product enhancements, especially toward the cloud platform amid increasing competition in the cloud domain remain major causes of concern.
(You can read the full research report on Oracle here >>>)
Shares of Merck have underperformed the Zacks Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry over the past year (-0.5% vs. +12.9%). Per the Zacks analyst, generic competition for several drugs, rising competitive pressure on diabetes franchise and declining Gardasil sales in China may pose challenges for the company. There are concerns about Merck’s ability to grow its non-oncology business ahead of Keytruda’s loss of exclusivity in 2028.
However, Keytruda, and new products have been driving Merck’s sales. Animal health and vaccine products are core growth drivers. Merck boasts a strong cancer pipeline, including Keytruda, which should drive long-term growth.
