There's no sugarcoating it: January was a rough month for the investing community. Both the broad-based S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite underwent their largest corrections in more than a year.
However, stock market crashes and corrections have always represented an opportunity for long-term investors to buy into great stocks at bargain prices. The following three top stocks have the potential to make you a lot richer in February, and most importantly, well beyond.
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NextEra Energy
The first top stock that's begging to be bought after the recent sell-off is the nation's largest electric utility by market cap, NextEra Energy (NEE 0.80%). NextEra has delivered a positive total return, including dividends paid, in 19 of the past 20 years, but has opened 2022 with a loss of 22% through the first four weeks.
The first thing patient investors are going to appreciate about NextEra is its highly predictable cash flow. If you're a homeowner or renter, there's a very good chance you're going to need electricity in your home. No matter how well or poor the U.S. economy is performing, demand for electricity doesn't ebb or flow much. This predictability is what allows the company's management team to undertake new infrastructure projects without having to worry about negatively impacting the company's profitability or dividend.
But what really separates NextEra Energy from its competition is the company's focus on renewable energy. No utility in the country is generating more capacity from solar or wind power than NextEra. Even though investing in these projects can be costly on a nominal basis, it's helping to significantly lower electricity generation costs over time. The end result is that the company has been growing at a high single-digit rate for more than a decade in an industry that's known for its low single-digit growth rates.
There's a good chance NextEra remains the renewable energy kingpin for the foreseeable future, too. The company has outlined plans to spend up to $55 billion, in aggregate, on infrastructure projects between 2020 and 2022. With lending rates near historic lows for the past two years, undertaking these projects should prove a wise move.
Lastly, don't forget about the company's regulated utility operations -- i.e., those not powered by renewable energy sources. Though giving state public utility commissions the ability to oversee rate hikes might sound like a nuisance, it's key to ensuring NextEra doesn't have to deal with potentially volatile wholesale electricity pricing.
Historically, every dip in NextEra Energy has been a buying opportunity, and this looks to be no different.
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Opendoor Technologies
Another top stock with all the tools needed to make you richer in February and beyond is tech-focused real estate company Opendoor Technologies (OPEN 0.23%).
If bottom-fishing in high-growth stocks is your thing, Opendoor may be the investment for you. Shares are down nearly 80% from their 52-week high, and 40% just since the year began (through this past weekend). Wall Street and investors appear concerned with the prospect of rising 30-year mortgage rates, as well as Zillow's failure with iBuying, which I'll touch on in a moment.
While higher mortgage rates are less than ideal for real estate companies, they'd have to rise substantially to even be close to their historic average. Though short-term knee-jerk reactions are possible if 30-year mortgage rates kick higher by 75 to 100 basis points, it's more likely that slightly higher rates will encourage on-the-fence buyers and sellers to act. Ultimately, this should benefit Opendoor's operating model of quickly purchasing, repairing, and selling homes.
To address the second concern, Zillow's pain with iBuying can be Opendoor's gain. iBuying describes real estate companies that purchase homes for cash, thereby eliminating the hassle and haggling associated with putting a home up for sale through traditional real estate channels. Zillow claimed that it was ending its iBuying program after miscalculating the value of homes in its inventory. This hasn't been a problem for Opendoor. In a year, the company more than doubled the number of markets it serves to 44, with year-over-year home sales jumping close to 400%. In other words, Opendoor now has one less competitor to worry about, and its operating results suggest its home valuation methods are working as expected.
Something else to consider is that Opendoor Technologies is keeping a 5% fee based on the value of the homes it sells, as well as deducting repair expenses. This relatively high fee and repair deduction provides a healthy buffer in case there is some price instability in the real estate market.
Even though Opendoor Technologies isn't yet profitable, the company's sales are skyrocketing and it's produced two considerably narrower-than-expected quarterly losses in a row. For investors with a higher tolerance for risk and reward, Opendoor looks like a smart buy.
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Salesforce
The third top stock that can make you richer in February, and likely well beyond, is cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions provide Salesforce.com (CRM 0.12%).
CRM software is used by consumer-facing businesses to enhance existing relationships with their clients and to boost sales. Aside from covering basic tasks, such as real-time data access/logging and the overseeing of product and service issues, CRM software is leaned on to assist with predictive sales analyses and online marketing campaigns. As you might guess, it's a big hit with service-oriented companies, but has steadily been making headway in sectors you wouldn't expect, such as finance and healthcare.
Although growth estimates vary, the consensus is for the global CRM market to grow by a low double-digit percentage throughout much of the decade. For example, a report from Fortune Business Insights is calling for a 12.1% compound annual growth rate through 2028. This is worth noting given that Salesforce is the kingpin of all CRM software solution providers.
Through the first-half of 2021, Salesforce accounted for a whopping 23.9% of all CRM global spend, per IDC. By comparison, the No.'s 2 through 5 in CRM share don't even add up to 20% of worldwide CRM revenue over the same stretch. It's probably safe to assume that the company's industry-leading position is safe for many years to come.
What's more, CEO Marc Benioff has done an exceptional job of pairing acquisitions with his company's existing ecosystem of services. Some of the more notable buyouts completed with Benioff at the helm include MuleSoft, Tableau, and most recently Slack Technologies. The latter expands the company's sources of revenue, broadens its appeal to small-and-medium-sized businesses, and gives it another platform to cross-sell its solutions.
With Benioff targeting at least $50 billion in annual sales by fiscal 2026, and therefore implying a sustainable annual growth rate of 20% (or more), Salesforce checks all the boxes for long-term, growth-seeking investors.
