The stimulus checks are coming. If you qualify for the $600 distribution, there's a good chance that you already have plans for the money. You will put the capital infusion to work paying off living expenses or maybe paying down some of the debt that tends to pile up over the holidays. This has been a very challenging year, and the money will come in handy.
However, if you've got your essentials covered and you can't think of any near-term splurges, you might want to consider investing some or all of your stimulus check in stocks with promising prospects for 2021. I see Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI +0.00%), fuboTV (FUBO +0.00%), and Novavax (NVAX 4.05%) as potential winners in the year ahead.
Image source: Getty Images.
Sirius XM Holdings
Unlike the two other stocks, which are multi-baggers already in 2020, Sirius XM has been a market laggard this year. The satellite radio giant is trading lower in 2020, something that it hasn't done on a dividend-adjusted basis since 2008. Sirius XM had a rough go of things early in the pandemic. The shelter-in-place phase of the pandemic had us driving less, and that made it easier to cancel a premium satellite radio subscription that's mostly consumed in our cars.
Sirius XM is bouncing back. It returned to top-line growth in its latest quarter. It recently locked up its biggest star through the end of 2025 with a contract extension. It has also made savvy acquisitions in streaming music and podcasting that will serve it well outside of daily commutes. Sirius XM may be ending an 11-year streak of delivering positive returns, but it's a strong candidate to begin a new run starting in 2021.
FuboTV
If you're a sports fan -- or have at least one person at your home that is an enthusiast of live sporting events -- you may want to warm up to fuboTV. The country's only sports-first live TV streaming service may have just 455,000 paid subscribers on its books, but it's growing quickly. Its market share of new sign-ups has more than doubled over just the past four months according to measurement and analytics firm ANTENNA.
The cord-cutting revolution is picking up steam, and televised sports programming is providing comfort food as we ride out the pandemic. FuboTV has boosted its year-end guidance twice in just the past three months. With pro forma revenue growing 71% over the past year -- and connected TV ad revenue more than doubling along the way -- you have to like the momentum here as it heads into the new year with strong momentum. The only thing better than a nascent player growing its slice of a market is when the pie itself is also growing. You have that here in fuboTV.
Novavax
Let's wrap things up with the riskiest pick of the litter. Novavax is undeniably one of this year's hottest stocks, up better than 3,000% -- no, that is not a typo -- in 2020 as we head into the final two weeks of the year. The biotech stock is one of the many players with a promising COVID-19 vaccine in the works, and don't go thinking that the race is over just because two other runners crossed the finish line first.
There will be billions of people to vaccinate out there, and NVX-CoV2373 will have plenty of arms to pierce if the nanoparticle-based remedy clears regulatory hurdles in any of the global markets. Several countries including the U.S. have already lined up beefy supply deals for the vaccine. And it's not the only arrow in Novavax's quiver. Its NanoFlu flu vaccine has topped the market leader in tackling that annual medical challenge in late-stage studies. Novavax has surprised the market as a 31-bagger in 2020, but it could be just scratching the surface if both of its potential game-changing vaccines get rolling in the months and year ahead.
Sirius XM, fuboTV, and Novavax are proving themselves as winners right now. The market should reward all three rising investments in 2021.
