Caroline Hyde

And it also means that the bar, I would say, is even higher on these companies to impress than it has been before, even though valuations in some cases have come down a bit, given that sort of sell-out of tech that we had seen earlier.

since the November highs.

So let's just start with Palantir, for example.

What would a software company that is going to deliver more than 60% earnings per share growth, more than 60% revenue growth, have to articulate, do you think, to change the sentiment on the name?

I mean, I think forward guidance is going to be absolutely key.

And I feel that's where sort of, you know, Microsoft might have just sort of let the side down a little bit compared to Meta, for example.

So I think forward guidance is going to be massively impressive in order to support this valuation.

I mean, as we speak about, you know, the valuation here is 140 times higher.

expected earnings.

So, you know, it really has a lot to live up to.

And given that we've seen all these questions about the AI spend, capital expenditure, what's the monetization, this does mean that investors do actually want to see that something's coming through now.

And for that reason, I think forward guidance is going to be key here.

Yeah, if anyone can show productivity and articulate what AI is doing, Palantir could likely do that.

Meanwhile, Alphabet's that one-stop shop, vertically integrated, showing what it can do with its own chips, doing what it can do with its own tech and hardware and the whole shebang.

Fiona, what do you anticipate?

Alphabet has had a lot of mood music to the positive of late.

Will that hold?

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think this is definitely one of the stocks that seems to be in the favoured few.

I mean, if we look, it's up 8% across January, which is, you know, pretty good returns for a tech stock in January, up 68% year on year.