Growth stocks may be more volatile than stoic blue-chip companies, and not all growth stocks in one's portfolio are going to work out, but buying stocks with long growth runways ahead of them early on can be an incredibly powerful way to build wealth.
So we asked three of our Motley Fool contributors to each highlight a stock they think has immense potential to be a great growth stock over the next several years. Here's why they picked TPI Composites (TPIC 1.17%), Baozun (BZUN 4.51%), and Tellurian (TELL -5.47%)
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This stock got its turbine stuck in 2018 but will soon get back up to speed
Rich Smith (TPI Composites): America's biggest manufacturer of composite blades for wind turbines, TPI Composites has been a favorite of mine for a while now -- enough so that I invested in the stock myself.
Since going public about two years ago, TPI has more than doubled, which is good news for those who've owned the stock. What makes this a good stock to buy right now, however, is what happened on Aug. 7, when TPI reported its Q2 2018 earnings. TPI missed earnings and guided investors to expect weaker earnings for all of this year than Wall Street had been expecting. That sparked a 5% sell-off in TPI stock.
But while this year isn't looking great for TPI, the longer-term future looks very bright indeed. Analysts forecast 35% annual earnings growth for the company over the long term, and as a leader in its field -- a growing field, I might add, as the world continues shifting toward green energy -- I have a hunch they might be right. Furthermore, TPI stock is trading for less than 16 times forward earnings right now, and barely 10 times 2020 estimated earnings.
If TPI can get through this transition year, and grow as fast as Wall Street thinks it can in the years to come, those could turn out to be bargain prices to pay for TPI.
A smaller e-commerce player doing big things
Keith Noonan (Baozun): With China's economy still expanding at a rapid clip and its e-commerce market having grown 32% in 2017 to account for roughly half of the world's online retail spending, it's no surprise that Western brands want to be a part of that growth. Baozun is a Chinese software company that provides its brand partners with customizable online stores, marketing, customer management, and order-fulfillment services.
The company is scaling down the warehousing and distribution side of its business, a move that's resulting in slower sales growth but stands to make the business substantially more profitable. However, a slowdown in the company's top-line expansion shouldn't deter investors.
In addition to standalone Web portals, websites built on Baozun's platform are integrated into the e-commerce megamalls owned by industry leaders Alibaba and JD.com. Baozun stores are also featured in WeChat, China's most used social media platform, and the e-commerce provider is working on new ways to expand and improve the visibility and accessibility of its partners' offerings. So while Baozun is a small company next to the titans of the online retail world -- its current market cap sits at roughly $3.4 billion -- it's actually helping the big players in the space to grow and has what looks to be a defensible niche.
Baozun is the market leader in its corner of China's online retail services industry, with roughly 25% market share, and already counts major companies including Nike, Microsoft, and Starbucks among its roughly 160 brand partners. The company trades at roughly 50 times this year's expected earnings, but it still has big growth potential as per-store sales volume on its platform expands and it continues to add new brand partners.
A start-up riding the fastest growing trend in oil and gas
Tyler Crowe (Tellurian Inc.): Two trends have had monumental consequences for the oil and gas industry that are really hard to overstate: unlocking trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in North America through hydraulic fracturing, and the ability to export that gas with shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at relatively low cost. These two factors have transformed the United States into one of the world's largest natural gas exporters, and the low costs of North American supplies mean that the U.S. will have a clear advantage selling its gas overseas for years to come.
That's what makes Tellurian an intriguing growth stock. The company is looking to build on the success of previous LNG export facilities with its own Driftwood LNG facility. The team behind Tellurian are the same people who conceived of and constructed the nation's first LNG export terminal with Cheniere Energy. They are looking to improve on the development process with a lower cost facility and by funding the development of the project by getting customers to buy equity stakes in the facility to keep debt costs down.
Tellurian is still in the permitting process and doesn't expect to have a completed facility until 2023 at the earliest, so there are a lot of risks ahead of it. However, if management can succeed with this project the way it did at Cheniere, then today's stock could be a great entry point.
