In most stock market environments, it can be a struggle to find decent investment opportunities with single-digit share prices. However, that isn't the case right now.
The short explanation of why is the abundance of special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, that have gone public in the past year or so. There have literally been hundreds of these blank check companies -- many have taken businesses public and many are still looking for targets. The most common starting share price for a SPAC is $10. And thanks to the cooling off of the SPAC boom we saw earlier this year, many interesting investment opportunities are trading for significantly less than this amount.
With that in mind, here are five stocks that are products of the 2020-2021 SPAC boom that are all trading for less than their initial $10 price tag and could be worth a closer look right now.
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An interesting play on the data center industry
There's a clear growth trend in the data center industry. As more devices are connected to the internet and the nature of data gets more complex over time, the need for secure and reliable places to house servers and networking equipment grows. The gradual rollout of 5G infrastructure and the rise in autonomous vehicles and augmented reality devices are just a few examples of catalysts that should keep data center demand growing.
Data center operator Cyxtera (CYXT) recently went public through a merger with a SPAC sponsored by highly successful investment firm Starboard Value. It has a share price of about $8, and trades at a significantly lower valuation to industry heavyweights like Digital Realty (DLR 0.67%) and Equinix (EQIX 0.72%).
Pre-deal SPACs under $10 have a margin of safety
There are a bunch of SPACs in the market still searching for their acquisition targets, some of which are trading for less than $10 per share. And while it may seem very risky to buy a stock without knowing what business you're investing in, there is a nice margin of safety. After all, pre-deal SPACs have $10 per share sitting in a trust account, and if the company does not find an acquisition target, investors get that money back.
While there's no guarantee that they will be able to find a deal, two in particular I'm holding are Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings IV (IPOD) and Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings VI (IPOF), SPACs run by notable investor Chamath Palihapitiya, which currently trade for about $9.80 per share.
A play on the future of real estate
Real estate technology company Offerpad is set to go public through a merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition (SPNV) and is currently trading for just under the SPAC's $10 per-share net asset value.
Offerpad is an iBuyer, which means that the company buys homes directly from sellers, aiming to sell them directly to homebuyers at a profit. In the second quarter, Offerpad bought more than 2,000 homes and sold 1,259, but this is still a tiny portion of the roughly 6 million homes sold annually in the United States, so this could be a huge growth opportunity in the years to come.
The next big social network company?
Last, but certainly not least, neighborhood social network Nextdoor recently announced plans to go public through SPAC merger with Khosla Ventures Acquisition II (KVSB). The deal values Nextdoor at just $4.3 billion, which is far less than other social networking stocks trade for, despite nearly one third of U.S. households being registered on the platform.
To be fair, Nextdoor still has a long way to go when it comes to monetizing its user base, but if it can figure it out, there could be tremendous upside. Nextdoor is receiving nearly $700 million in fresh growth capital once the SPAC merger is complete and has an excellent leader in CEO Sarah Friar, who was formerly CFO of Square (SQ -1.97%) and helped transform that company into the $100+ billion powerhouse it is today.
Know what you're getting into
As a final thought, it's worth noting that all of these stocks are quite speculative at this point, just like most companies that have gone public via SPAC. All of these are in the relatively early stages of growth and/or figuring out how to best monetize their businesses. So, invest with the long term in mind and only if you're willing to ride out a potential roller-coaster over the next few years.
