I'm not afraid to consider stocks with small prices when looking for big gains. Most of the names trading that low are there for a reason, and they'll never get out. However, if you accept the risks that come with buying out-of-favor investments there are winners to be found if you are careful.
Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI +0.00%), iQiyi (IQ +3.39%), and Enthusiast Gaming Holdings (EGLX +12.96%) are three low-priced stocks that have the potential to bounce back in the final three months of 2021. Let's take a closer look.
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Sirius XM Holdings
After 11 consecutive years of delivering positive returns for its shareholders Sirius XM proved mortal in 2020. It's now trading 3% lower year to date, threatening to stretch its losing streak to two years.
It's easy to see why investors were steering clear of the satellite radio provider last year. Auto sales were down, and that's the primary source of new subscribers for the platform. We also weren't driving around as much in 2020 because of the pandemic, making it easier to cancel Sirius XM subscriptions for cars that sat largely parked most of the time.
Sirius XM is growing again. There were a record 31.4 million self-pay subscribers at the end of June. It expects to close out 2021 with 1.1 million more accounts than it had when the year began. The 15% year-over-year revenue growth it posted in its latest quarter is its best organic increase in more than 10 years.
Sirius XM is consistently profitable, something that you don't often see with stocks fetching single-digit price tags. It also pays out a quarterly dividend that it has increased every year since initiating a payout policy five years ago.
iQiyi
There are a lot of once-popular Chinese growth stocks that have cratered to the single digits, and one that stands out for me is iQiyi. The company behind one of China's most popular streaming video platforms hit another all-time low on Monday.
Investors have been avoiding Chinese stocks since regulators began limiting the business models of industries including online gaming and for-profit educators. iQiyi is no stranger to the short leash of operating in the world's most populous nation, as it knows about the tight controls when it comes to acceptable video content.
Growth has certainly slowed at iQiyi lately. Revenue rose just 3% in its latest quarter. Guidance calls for revenue to improve to a 6% to 12% advance for the current quarter, but that obviously isn't going to excite investors. When iQiyi went public in 2018 it had delivered 55% in top-line growth the year before. Despite increasing its paid subscriber base to 106.2 million, business has been stagnant for the past two years. The silver lining is that ad revenue is on the rise again, as a lot of folks enjoy the platform for free on an ad-supported basis. The stock would have to more than double from here to get back to where it was when the year began, but it's also a sign of how much its prospects of recovering have been discounted. iQiyi is a lot riskier than Sirius XM for various reasons, but a strong candidate to bounce back if the Chinese government shows signs of easing up on business controls.
Enthusiast Gaming Holdings
We can close with the fastest growing stock on this list. Enthusiast Gaming grew its revenue at a blistering 498% clip last year. Its top line has soared 321% and then 427% in the first two quarters of 2021.
Enthusiast Gaming specializes in video game content. It operates various popular YouTube channels and has partnerships with roughly 500 video gaming influencers. It operates seven different esports teams and 100 different websites covering various specialties within the video gaming market.
Covering all of the right buzzwords and posting jaw-dropping revenue growth are usually the tickets to catapult a stock higher, but Enthusiast Gaming isn't perfect. It's still a couple of years away from profitability. The monster growth also comes from a small starting point, as trailing revenue is just shy of $100 million. Enthusiast Gaming still seems to have all of the right ingredients to become a more popular stock even as its growth inevitably decelerates from here.
Sirius XM Holdings, iQiyi, and Enthusiast Gaming Holdings are trading at single-digit price points, but it's not fair to dismiss them as penny stocks. They are bigger companies than their low price points suggest, and they have a chance to get back on track in the fourth quarter.
