Peter Thiel deployed more than $418 million across eight stocks last quarter, and his single biggest purchase was Amazon. The 495,000-share buy now makes Amazon his top position, representing 28% of his portfolio.
Peter Thiel bought 495,000 Amazon shares last quarter, and the company now represents 28% of his portfolio, making it his largest holding. It was the biggest single purchase in a quarter where Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and the first outside investor in Facebook, deployed more than $418 million across eight stocks through his fund, Thiel Macro.
A return to stocks after two empty quarters
Thiel's fund held zero stock positions for two straight quarters — the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year — before last quarter's buying spree. Seven of the eight stocks he bought were energy names: Vista Energy, Vistra Corp., American Electric Power Co., DTE Energy, FirstEnergy Corp, CMS Energy, and X-Energy. The report notes that some of these energy players, which fuel power for AI, may themselves be a bet on the AI growth story. But the largest single purchase was in a technology giant: Amazon.
AI adds to an established business
Amazon was already an e-commerce and cloud computing leader before the AI boom, and in the most recent full year its revenue topped $716 billion. AI now works as an additional growth driver: the company uses it to streamline its fulfillment network and sells both its own AI chips and other companies' AI products through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
In the recent quarter, Amazon said its chips business revenue increased in the triple digits to an annual run rate of more than $25 billion, and its AI revenue run rate also advanced in the triple digits to more than $25 billion. According to CEO Andy Jassy: "Customers choose AWS because we offer the broadest capabilities", he said on the company's latest earnings call.
Thiel hasn't disclosed a reason for the purchase. Amazon stock currently trades at 20 times forward earnings estimates, a multiple the report described as cheap relative to the company's earnings track record.
Source: Fool
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