Oracle (ORCL)

Has been a very acquisitive company. Made a ton of acquisitions throughout history and almost all of them have gone exceptionally well. Has grown its services and products very, very well. Cloud computing platform is growing very rapidly. Recurring revenues are very high. Trading at about 13X earnings. P/E ratio of 16.8 and a yield of 0.68%.

The only disappointing, slightly negative story is that there is still a lot of hardware dependency. Cloud side has been incredible but that area has a lot of competition with SAP AG (SAP-N). Very cash-rich. Over the last year they’ve been focusing on midsize emerging cloud switching delivery companies globally. He is a very minimal holder and wishes he had had a lot more. Over the next year, this is a company where you absolutely want to be.

(Top Pick Dec 14/11, Up 16.27%) Sold a few months ago. He was concerned with the revenue growth. Hardware side was a drag on the company. He switched to Qualcom.

(A Top Pick Sept 7/11. Up 18.85%.) Dominant business software. Really, really aggressive. Acquisitive. About a 3^rd of their sales is out of Europe and in spite of the tough times there, they continue to do very well. The developing world is expanding at a more rapid pace and this company is there for sure.