Congratulations, folks, we've made it to the halfway point of 2021, and things are beginning to look up. Two of the three major U.S. stock indexes hit an all-time high last week, and U.S. vaccination rates continue to head higher, signaling that an end to the pandemic, at least within the borders of the U.S., may be in sight.
Yet, even with equities pricier than they've seemingly been in close to two decades, value abounds for long-term investors. As we head into July, the following three top stocks stand out as particularly attractive, and they have a genuine shot at making investors richer this month, and well beyond.
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Teladoc Health
To begin with, leading telehealth services provider Teladoc Health (TDOC 3.17%) looks like a bargain for growth seekers after losing nearly half of its value since mid-February.
If there's a knock against Teladoc Health, it's that there are questions about the company's growth sustainability once we move beyond the pandemic. This is to say that Teladoc was served up on a silver platter in 2020. With physicians purposefully keeping high-risk patients out of their offices last year, many turned to virtual visits as a solution. As a result, the company handled 10.59 million total visits, up from 4.14 million in 2019.
While these growth concerns could prove palpable in the extremely short-term when life does return to some semblance of normal, the proof is in the pudding that telehealth services are a game-changer and here to stay. Being able to consult with a physician from home is substantially more convenient for patients. On the flipside, physicians should have easier access to vital health metrics for chronically ill patients with telemedicine services. The expectation is this'll lead to improved patient outcomes, which means less money coming out of the pockets of health insurers.
The icing on the cake is that Teladoc grew its annual sales by an average of 74% in the six years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic. Again, despite post-pandemic growth concerns, both the logic of telehealth and the sales data demonstrate that it's a driving force of change within the healthcare industry.
What's more, Teladoc added an important puzzle piece in the fourth quarter of 2020 with the acquisition of applied health signals company Livongo Health. Livongo collects large amounts of data on patients with chronic illnesses, and with the help of artificial intelligence sends tips to its members to help them lead healthier lives. It had 658,000 diabetes members at the end of March, but is expanding its reach to include folks with hypertension and weight management issues. This means Livongo's services will cover a large swath of the U.S. adult population.
Teladoc and Livongo are just scratching the surface of their potential as a broad-based personalized healthcare service. This could well be one of a handful of transformative healthcare companies of the decade.
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Columbia Care
Another smart place to consider putting your money to work right now is in the cannabis industry. Understand, though, that the pot industry is bifurcated, with Canada largely underperforming and U.S. marijuana stocks outperforming. Since the U.S. is the largest cannabis market in the world by a longshot, one of the top stocks to consider buying right now is under-the-radar U.S. multistate operator (MSO) Columbia Care (CCHWF +16.40%).
Although a lot of folks are waiting for the Biden administration to tackle cannabis reform, it's simply not needed. While it'd be great if restrictions were lifted for U.S. pot stocks, the fact is that 36 states have legalized weed in some capacity, 11 of which are also currently selling adult-use cannabis in dispensaries. As long as the federal Justice Department allows states to regulate their own industries, this will be a high-growth opportunity for investors.
The interesting thing about the lesser-known Columbia Care is that it was all-in on medical marijuana until recently. When U.S. states began waving the green flag on recreational marijuana, it began pivoting its approach to include this larger pool of potential consumers. According to the company, it controls 92 dispensaries and 30 manufacturing/processing facilities, if you take into account all pending acquisitions.
All MSOs offer their own unique blueprint for growth in the United States. For Columbia Care, acquisitions and carefully plotted expansion have been its ticket to higher sales. It recently closed on its purchase of Green Leaf Medical, purchased The Green Solution last year, and announced the acquisition of The Medicine Man in the Denver, Colorado metro area last month. Although integrating these acquisitions and using its common stock as capital could hinder its bottom-line operating results in 2021, things should vastly improve in 2022 and beyond.
Columbia Care is also building a presence in a number of key limited-license states, such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and Virginia. Limited-license states either cap the number of retail, cultivation, or processing licenses they issue, or issue licenses based on jurisdiction. The point being that Columbia Care is seeking out high-dollar states where competition is being dialed back purposefully by regulators.
Between rapid organic growth in legalized states and its aggressive but purpose-driven acquisition strategy, Columbia Care is expected to top $500 million in sales this year and $1 billion by 2023. This means investors can scoop up shares of Columbia Care today for less than two times Wall Street's full-year sales forecast for 2023. That's inexpensive for such a robust growth stock.
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PubMatic
The third top stock that'll make investors a lot richer in July (and beyond) is cloud-based advertising technology company PubMatic (PUBM 1.86%).
In ye olden days (prior to the internet), connecting advertisers with publishers and agreeing on a price was a time-consuming, human-driven process. But since the advent of the internet, developers and publishers have been refining how ads reach users, as well as how these advertisements should be priced. This has given rise to programmatic advertising, which is PubMatic's stomping ground.
In simple terms, programmatic advertising involves the real-time buying, selling, and optimization of ads by machine-learning algorithms. Connecting advertisers with publishers occurs two ways: via demand-side platforms (DSP) or sell/supply-side platforms (SSP). DSPs allow the advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Meanwhile, SSPs empower publishers to sell their display space to advertisers.
PubMatic's dynamic cloud-based infrastructure operates as an SSP, which comes with a number of key advantages. SSPs limit the number of similar ad impressions to a single viewer, allow publishers to set a price floor for advertising space, and use machine learning to select the best ad for a user, not the one that necessarily boasts the highest price. This optimized focus for publishers resulted in PubMatic recognizing a net dollar-based retention of 130% for the March-ended quarter. In other words, existing publishers on its platform spent 30% more in Q1 2021 than they did in the year-ago quarter.
What we're witnessing in the advertising space is a clear push toward digital. According to a May investor presentation from the company, global digital ad spend should grow by an annualized rate of 10% through 2024, with even faster annual growth expected for mobile, digital video, and connected TV (CTV)/over-the-top (OTT) programmatic ad spend. This focus on mobile and CTV/OTT is precisely why PubMatic is outpacing the industry in terms of top-line growth, and explains why it raised its full-year 2021 sales guidance.
If PubMatic can continue to grow sales by 15% to 20% annually, it could very easily make patient investors a lot richer.
