Each week, Industry Focus: Financials host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP each discuss a stock on the top of their watch lists. This week, Frankel thinks Markel (MKL +0.39%) could be a great value play, while Moser has his eye on Docusign (DOCU +4.28%), which he feels could have tons of growth potential.
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This video was recorded on May 13, 2019.
Jason Moser: OK, Matt, let's wrap it up this week, as always, with One to Watch. What is a stock you've got your eye on this week?
Matt Frankel: I'm going to change what I planned to talk about and mention Markel. After hearing what you said, one thing really stood out to me. You said Markel's not a cheap stock at 1.5X book. But to put that in perspective, that's almost exactly where Berkshire is right now. They're trading at the same valuation. Which one has more growth potential over time? If you can get Markel for the same valuation price to book as Berkshire, I would pay that all day for the growth potential long-term.
Moser: Well, I like that! I like that perspective there! I agree. Markel, clearly, as the smaller business, has more growth prospects there. That's an interesting point there on the valuation. Listen, every once in a while, you have to call an audible, man! Good call there!
I'm going to go with a company probably a lot of listeners out there have heard of to this point now. It's still relatively new on the markets. DocuSign, the cloud-based e-signature solution that probably everyone has used at this point. You may not even realize you've used it. When you have to sign any kind of a document -- and I'm talking about anything from loans to insurance papers, anything of contractual agreement -- DocuSign is one of the market leaders there in making sure that you get those documents signed, and they're able to manage the workflow of those documents. For me, that's the interesting part of the businesses, as they evolve and become more than just this e-signature business. It was a company built very much on the technology of today in the cloud, which is encouraging. Strong balance sheet there with close to $800 million on the balance sheet. We talk about unprofitable businesses; DocuSign is one of those. But again, still relatively new to the public markets. They're working their way to profitability pretty quickly. They reported another really good quarter. They added 23,000 new customers. They have a global base of now closing in on 500,000 customers. A lot of interesting things about this business. It's got a lot of qualities we like. I own shares myself. I think it's certainly one that listeners ought to take a look at as well.
