The market's off to a shaky start this week, but there's opportunity in the volatility. Now is a good time to size up some of the stocks on your shopping to list, asking yourself if the stories are getting better even as the stocks are going nowhere.
You don't need a lot of money to take advantage of the ups and downs of Wall Street. Just $1,000 can go a long way if you are buying the right growth stocks, and right now I like Crocs (CROX 2.19%), fuboTV (FUBO 6.34%), and Roku (ROKU 4.47%). The first one is a surprising winner in 2021. The other two are surprising laggards. Even though $1,000 will buy you just a couple of shares in some of these names, let's get into why I see these as growth stocks that are about to take off.
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1. Crocs
If you haven't been following Crocs lately you may be surprised at how well the stock has been doing. The maker of hole-filled resin shoes has more than doubled in 2021, nearly quadrupling since the start of last year.
Crocs has had its ups and downs over the years, but it's clearly on an upswing now. The revival started in 2017 when a new CEO came in just as the maker of unique footwear was posting its third straight year of declining sales. Revenue growth turned slightly positive in 2018 with a 6% increase, followed by back-to-back years of 13% top-line upticks. This year Crocs is running on an entirely different level.
Back in February Crocs was targeting 20% to 25% revenue gains for all of 2021, a great achievement as it would be nearly doubling its growth from the prior year. In late April the guidance was bumped to 40% to 50% in top-line growth, and this summer it got boosted again. Crocs now sees a 60% to 65% increase in revenue in 2021.
The pandemic made us appreciate Crocs again. We chose comfort over fashion during the shelter-in-place phase of the pandemic. Now that we're out and about again we're not giving up our Crocs. We're seeing celebrities strutting in Crocs at media events and out in the wild. Crocs are showing up in movies like this summer's Suicide Squad. The stock may have hit an all-time high last week, but with a lot of people still skeptical on the turnaround the bullish argument here is that the rally is just beginning.
2. fuboTV
When you size up the IPO class of 2020, fuboTV should be the teacher's pet. Some debutantes appear to be peaking just before their stock offerings, but the live TV streaming service is stepping on the gas. Let's just go over the top-line performance in fuboTV's first four quarters as a public company.
- Q3 2020: 71% revenue growth.
- Q4 2020: 98% revenue growth.
- Q1 2021: 135% revenue growth.
- Q2 2021: 196% revenue growth.
A 138% increase in subscribers over the past year coupled with a 30% pop in average revenue per user is why fuboTV's revenue has nearly tripled. The near-term outlook is even more exciting. As a sports-minded streaming service -- with more than three dozen of its over 100 channels dedicated to live sporting events -- it knows its audience. It introduced free-to-play predictive games and live layered stats this summer, and it expects to roll out a sportsbook to allow viewers to place cash bets on the games they're watching before the end of the year.
Despite the perpetual improvement at fuboTV the stock is roughly where it was when the year began. With sports season heating up, fuboTV's engaged audience will help it win this game.
3. Roku
There are worse things than standing in place, and right now Roku is trading slightly lower in 2021. It doesn't seem fair. Roku continues to be the platform of choice for folks streaming from home, with 38% of all smart TVs rolling out with Roku's operating system as the default factory-installed operating system. If you don't happen to buy a Roku-ready TV you can buy a dongle for as little as $20 to $30 that will plug into one of your TV's HDMI ports.
This is a growing market, and even if viewing hours slipped this summer as we began to venture outside again the long-term trend is undeniable. We love streaming video entertainment from home. Sunday's Emmy Awards is another reminder that the best shows on TV these days are largely on premium streaming services.
Despite the slight dip in sequential consumption in its latest quarter and the recent challenge of a competitor introducing its own TVs, Roku has never been better. The record 55.1 million active accounts on the platform at the end of June was a 28% increase from where it was a year ago, and like fuboTV we're seeing average revenue per user advance at a double-digit percentage clip. Roku is a worthy leader among streaming service stocks. The stock taking a small step back in 2021 at a time when the fundamentals continue to move forward makes this a strong candidate to take off once the dust settles.
