Looking for stocks you can confidently buy when the stock market as a whole takes a dive? Buying up shares of terrific businesses after the tide rolls out is a winning strategy for patient investors.
Major market crashes and minor corrections are always on the horizon. It pays to have a list of perennial winners to pick from the next time bargain shopping opportunities present themselves.
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These stocks already have a history of providing outsized gains for their shareholders. Despite operating in very different industries, they're tied to businesses that can rely on steady cash flows from subscriptions their clients wouldn't dare to cancel in any economic environment.
Intuitive Surgical
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG -0.50%) is the world's largest manufacturer of robot-assisted surgical systems. Financing programs that allow smaller hospital systems to lease the company's da Vinci surgical systems are one steady source of revenue. Most importantly, though, the company can depend on steady sales of instruments and accessories that need to be replaced after each procedure.
In the first quarter, procedures performed with da Vinci machines rose 16% compared to the previous year period. This was enough to boost revenue by 18% and adjusted earnings soared 32% higher.
There are other manufacturers of robot-assisted surgical systems, but it will probably be a long time before we see significant competitive pressure. Training surgical teams to use new robot-assisted surgical systems is an expense that hospitals generally avoid. Also, generating evidence that shows a competing system leads to better outcomes requires expensive head-to-head clinical trials that Intuitive's competitors would rather avoid.
Shares of Intuitive have risen more than 60% over the past year to a price that is more than 70 times earnings expectations for the year ahead. Intuitive shares can provide a positive return for patient investors even at this nosebleed valuation. If you want to outperform the broad market by a significant margin, though, you might need to wait for a pullback.
CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike (CRWD 0.13%) leads the market for cloud-native cybersecurity services. Unlike its peers, CrowdStrike doesn't bother with software that lives on its customers' devices. Instead, the CrowdStrike Falcon platform makes all of its customers part of a "live" network.
CrowdStrike's live network ensures all customers gain immediate protection from new threats every time Falcon recognizes and responds to one. Falcon's cloud-native architecture also allows potential new customers to easily try using the Falcon Prevent module for free from CrowdStrike's website or the Amazon Web Services marketplace. After Falcon Prevent lands a new customer, there are 18 more modules that customers can subscribe to.
The company's land-and-expand strategy has been more successful than anyone could have hoped for. In April, the number of businesses out there with subscription-based services jumped 82% year over year to 11,420. Half of CrowdStrike's customers subscribe to five or more different modules and they tend to stick around. In the first quarter, the company reported a dollar-based retention rate that exceeded 120%.
At the moment, CrowdStrike shares trade at a whopping 55 times trailing sales. The company is growing fast enough to deliver further gains for those who buy the stock at this rich valuation. Patient investors who buy this stock on the dips, though, could come out miles ahead.
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Veeva Systems
Just about every professional who develops, manufactures, or markets biopharmaceuticals is familiar with Veeva Systems (VEEV -0.71%) and its cloud-based services. Back in 2007 this software as a service (SaaS) provider began marketing a customer relationship management (CRM) product based on Salesforce.com's but geared toward the highly regulated world of pharmaceutical sales.
Since then, Veeva Systems has expanded its offerings vertically within the biopharmaceutical niche. Now company's wholly owned Vault services can help start-up biotechs track the mountains of data produced in laboratories and clinical trials long before they have any commercial-stage products to sell.
There are other software vendors out there that can help biopharmaceutical companies in one way or another, but none of them combine the same suite of tools that Veeva Systems offers. This is how the company raised its customer count past 1,000 during the first quarter. Topline sales in fiscal 2022 are expected to climb about 25% year over year.
Familiarity with Veeva's services is increasingly common among professionals in the life science industries. The beneficial network effect that Veeva's operation enjoys doesn't update in real-time, but it does make the company's dominant position easy to defend.
Veeva Systems' recent price works out to more than 90 times adjusted earnings expectations for the year. This life science stock can probably provide market-beating gains from this nosebleed valuation. Scooping up shares after the next market crash, though, could make you rich in a much shorter time frame.
