We all know Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is taking over the world.
It’s a foregone conclusion. And my neighbors are eager to assist them if the number of Prime boxes at their door is any indication.
It’s not just their ubiquitous delivery trucks. Amazon’s greatest success has been its cloud services. Amazon all but invented the cloud as we know it today when it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The rest, as they say, is history.
Everyone Uses Amazon Cloud Services
Virtually every large enterprise (and government agency) has now outsourced at least some portion of their back-office computing needs to cloud service providers like Amazon.
Make no mistake, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knows what side his bread is buttered on. AWS makes up about 12% of Amazon’s revenues but a massive 47% of its operating income.
Everything runs in the cloud today. Those photos you took on your iPhone? They’re stored in the cloud. Your driver’s license details? Depending on the state, they’re likely in the cloud as well. Heavy number crunching done by university or corporate labs? You guessed it. There’s a very good chance a cloud server handled that workload.
Consulting firm Gartner expects end-user cloud spending to be up 23% in 2021 and another 20% in 2022, and this is after a massive pandemic-related surge in cloud spending in 2020.
A Better Cloud Bet
I’m not here to talk about Amazon. It’s a wonderful company and one that has truly changed the world. But it only rates a 46 out of 100 on my Green Zone Ratings system, giving it a neutral rating.
I’m more interested in the bigger picture here. I want to find companies that stand to disproportionately benefit from the trends that Amazon has put in place.
I often use the example of the California gold rush of the 1840s. Few of the thousands of aspiring miners that made the trek out west struck it rich. The real fortunes were in supplying the miners — selling the picks and shovels, if you will.
That’s the approach I like to take in the cloud. Amazon might have created the trend, but I expect the real money is in “pick-and-shovel” plays.
As an example, consider Amazon’s premier cloud partner.
It’s an Indian IT consulting company that helps businesses transition their legacy systems to the cloud. It rates a “Strong Bullish” 84 in my Green Zone rating system, and my Green Zone Fortunes readers are up nearly 80% in just 10 months. It’s even pushed just beyond my current “buy-up-to” level, but that’s a good thing! It’s proof that my Green Zone Ratings system works!
This stock’s Green Zone Rating on July 16, 2021.
One thing stuck out when I looked at this stock’s most recent rating. It rates a 98 on both my momentum and volatility factors. That means that not only is the stock in a more powerful uptrend than all but 2% of the stocks in our universe, but it’s achieving that outperformance with less risk than almost all of the 8,000 stocks we rate.
The company released its quarterly earnings last week, and the results are exactly what I expected, given the size of the opportunity in front of them. Revenues were up 22%, and profits were up a whopping 35% in the second quarter of 2021. And remember, these numbers are coming off or strong comparable figures for 2020.
Are more gains to come? Only time will tell. But I’m betting the answer is yes. We have a fast-growing, high-quality company in the middle of one of the great macro trends of our time.
While this stock is just beyond my current “buy-up-to” price level, it isn’t the only tech winner within my Green Zone Fortunes model portfolio.
Cloud computing is a stock mega trend that isn’t going anywhere, but I’m even more excited about a DNA technology I call “Imperium.” Investing in this tech now is like investing in internet stocks during the ‘90s.
My readers already locked in 90% gains on the first half of this trade after only four months back in September 2020, but there’s still plenty of time to get in as this stock runs higher. And it’s only one of my top four DNA stocks to buy now. Click here to find out more about this tech stock mega trend and join Green Zone Fortunes today!
To good profits,
Adam O’Dell
Chief investment strategist, Money & Markets