Growth stocks are always an attractive buy for investors. Driven by robust top-line growth, these stocks generally trade at a premium. This means high-growth stocks tend to outpace the broader markets in a bull run.
Several technology-based growth stocks have generated considerable returns in the past five years. Companies like Square, Shopify, Roku, and many others have crushed overall market returns since their IPOs in the past few years. Here are two tech stocks that have beaten the market since debuting as public companies in the past few years, but have market-beating potential in the long term as well.
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1. DocuSign stock is up 78% in 2019
DocuSign (DOCU 1.56%) is a company that automates manual and paper-based processes. It started with automating the e-signature process and is now rapidly expanding into other processes. The company's IPO was in April 2018.
Its DocuSign Agreement Cloud product transforms the entire contract process between two parties. It is used to generate and negotiate agreements as part of a full contract life cycle management system. The product also helps to automate the generation, negotiation, and approval of agreements both in-person and remotely and can easily generate customized documents with a few clicks. This lets companies accelerate the agreement process and eliminate several legacy paperwork hassles. Using DocuSign's services, the company claims that up to 82% of agreements are completed in less than a day, and 49% of agreements are completed within 15 minutes.
While the process increases time efficiency, DocuSign also estimates its e-signature product to save an average of $36 per agreement by eliminating hard costs and improving employee productivity.
DocuSign is already one of the leaders in the e-signature category. It closed the quarter ended in October with a customer base of 562,000. Almost every business in the world is a potential DocuSign customer. There are agreements in every business vertical, such as sales, human resources, marketing, information technology, operations, and finance.
Most companies still have an agreement system that can be monetized by DocuSign's portfolio of services. DocuSign has estimated the TAM (total addressable market) at $25 billion, giving it enough room for long-term revenue growth.
DocuSign has been able to grow at scale over the years. The stock has almost doubled since April 2018 (when it went public). The company closed fiscal 2019 (ended in January) with $701 million in sales. This figure is estimated by Wall Street analysts to reach $1.51 billion by fiscal 2022. In its most recent quarter (ended in October), revenue growth was 40%.
During the company's earnings call, CEO Dan Springer stated:
We are pleased with our progress to date. By expanding our portfolio we're motivating customers to automate more of their agreement processes which in turn drive even more eSignature. This virtuous cycle is illustrated by some interesting customer expansions we had in Q3.
DocuSign has a subscription-based business model. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2020, subscription sales accounted for 94% of total revenue. A subscription model ensures a steady stream of revenue, which is essential in a sluggish macro environment.
All things considered, the huge potential for growth and the worldwide shift of businesses toward automation make DocuSign one of the safest growth stocks to bank on for the next decade.
2. GoDaddy has outperformed markets since its IPO
GoDaddy (GDDY 1.64%) went public in April 2015 and closed trading at $26.50 that day. The stock has risen more than 150% since then and continues to remain an attractive investment for long-term investors.
GoDaddy provides tech services to small businesses, individuals, and web design professionals. In addition to operating a domain marketplace, the company also offers cloud-based products and customer-care services. Its domain business accounts for 46% of sales, followed by the hosting and presence business at 38% and business applications at 16%.
GoDaddy's products include tools for website building, hosting, and security to construct and enhance the online presence of an individual or a business. It also provides productivity tools such as online storage, domain-specific email, invoicing, and bookkeeping solutions.
GoDaddy primarily targets e-commerce businesses and digital platforms. It has steadily expanded its range of products and solutions. GDDY already runs a quarter of the world's domains. It now claims to have the world's largest paid website ecosystem.
With the number of e-commerce businesses set to explode in the coming years, GoDaddy has enough opportunities to increase the traction of its domain business as well as ancillary services. According to Statista, the global e-commerce business will touch $4.5 trillion by 2021, up from $2.3 trillion in 2017.
In the quarter ended in September, GoDaddy sales were up 12% year over year at $761 million. This growth was driven by a 7% increase in average revenue per user as well as a 5% increase in the customer base. The company has managed to grow sales at an annual rate of 19% in the last five years.
Though revenue growth will decelerate over the next few years, the company has achieved economies of scale and will be able to expand profit margins at a healthy rate.
According to Wall Street estimates, GoDaddy sales will rise 12.2% in 2019 and 10.9% in 2020. Comparatively, its earnings are forecast to rise by 62.2% in 2019 and 45.2% in 2020.
The robust growth metrics for DocuSign and GoDaddy should also result in a considerable appreciation of their stock prices. The two companies have already crushed market returns since their IPO and will likely continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
