The recent market sell-off has plunged many high-growth tech stocks into bear market territory, with declines of 20% or more. History suggests that investors who take a long-term outlook have the best chance to generate positive returns, so there are some enticing opportunities amid the present flood of red ink.
Three Motley Fool contributors think that in light of their discounted stock prices and rapid growth rates, innovative companies DigitalOcean (DOCN -1.76%), MercadoLibre (MELI -0.45%), and CrowdStrike (CRWD 0.13%) could grow your money fivefold over the next decade. Let's dive into the details.
Image source: Getty Images.
Competing in the cloud
Anthony Di Pizio (DigitalOcean): DigitalOcean is a cloud computing company focused on serving small organizations with under 500 employees, an opportunity it estimates is worth $72 billion per year right now, and could more than double by 2025. The customers it pursues can sometimes fall through the cracks at trillion-dollar tech giants like Amazon or Microsoft, which lead the broader cloud computing industry.
Small enterprises in need of cloud services are often seeking simple, cost-effective solutions with support to match, as they might not be large enough to have a team of technical professionals in-house. DigitalOcean provides a clean dashboard that offers a user-friendly experience, and predictable pricing that is among the cheapest in the industry. In fact, depending on the configuration, a basic package with DigitalOcean can be less than half the cost of an Amazon Web Services-equivalent package.
DigitalOcean reported its full-year 2021 earnings results on Feb. 24, and its stock rightly soared by 18%. The company delivered $429 million in revenue, which was a 37% jump over 2020, and it also expanded its customer count and average revenue per user to record highs. Its revenue growth was a strong acceleration compared to the 25% growth it generated between 2019 and 2020.
Mathematically speaking, DigitalOcean would have to grow its revenue by 18% per year between now and 2032 to generate a fivefold return in its stock, assuming its price-to-sales ratio remains constant. It crushed that mark in 2021, and analysts estimate a further 32% revenue growth in 2022, with $567 million. But most important, DigitalOcean is only capturing a fraction of its addressable market right now, leaving plenty of room for upside.
Image source: Getty Images.
The most appealing company on the market today
Jamie Louko (MercadoLibre): If there is one company that I think is the best e-commerce stock to buy right now, it would be MercadoLibre. The company blew past analysts' expectations and it continued its high growth rate -- with Q4 revenue jumping 60% year over year to $2.1 billion -- despite being worth only $46 billion. On top of that, the company announced impressive bottom-line results: Net income for the year moved from negative territory to positive $83 million.
These major headline improvements are just the tip of the iceberg, however. Mercado Pago, which is becoming increasingly important to MercadoLibre's business, grew revenue 70% compared to the year-ago quarter, and it now makes up 37% of the company's revenue. This success was driven primarily by increasing active users, which topped 51 million -- and those users engaging with Pago in more parts of their life.
The company's off-platform total payment volume, which is transaction volume from outside of the MercadoLibre ecosystem, reached $16 billion -- a jump of 75% year over year. Using Pago for just MercadoLibre orders is one thing, but the fact that consumers are using Pago to pay for things outside of their platform, like for gas or other e-commerce transactions, proves that the fintech platform is gaining market share in Latin America.
The company saw dominance in more than just its financial segment, however. Mercado Envios, the company's logistics platform, now ships 40% of all goods in its core geographies -- not just MercadoLibre goods -- driven by Mexico where it has a 67% market share.
After this dominance, you would think MercadoLibre is trading at all-time highs, but it is actually 54% off its all-time high. With this drop, the company is now trading at just seven times sales, its lowest valuation since 2016. The company's opportunity is still vast with 635 million citizens in Latin America and only 82 million of them in its ecosystem.
With a greenfield opportunity ahead of it, I believe that MercadoLibre can use its current market leadership to propel itself into continued success for the next decade. With shares trading at such a bargain, I think MercadoLibre can easily deliver five-times returns over the next decade, if not more.
Image source: Getty Images.
Cybersecurity is more critical than ever
Trevor Jennewine (CrowdStrike): Cybercrime is more common than ever, as attacks on corporate networks jumped over 50% in 2021, according to Check Point Research. Even worse, the hackers behind those attacks are relying on more sophisticated tools, especially ransomware. Last year, a business was targeted by ransomware every 11 seconds, and the damages totaled $20 billion, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Those scary statistics underscore the need for effective cybersecurity, and CrowdStrike has become the gold standard in endpoint (device) protection.
Its cloud-native platform comprises 21 different modules, all delivered through a single piece of software, which itself captures signals from across its ecosystem of protected devices. Using that data, CrowdStrike leans on artificial intelligence to predict and prevent cyberattacks, creating a network effect that has earned the company a reputation for industry-leading threat detection.
As a result, CrowdStrike topped the endpoint security market in 2021 with over 14% market share, according to the International Data Corporation. Better yet, that marks the second consecutive year the company has taken the top spot, and CrowdStrike actually increased its market share by 4 percentage points. Not surprisingly, that dominance translated into strong financial results. Revenue skyrocketed 69% to $1.3 billion over the past year, and free cash flow jumped 67% to $411 million. But CrowdStrike's growth story is still in the early chapters.
Cybercrime is likely to become an even bigger problem in the coming years, as enterprises continue to spend money on digital transformation projects. In fact, CrowdStrike puts its market opportunity at $55 billion in 2022, but believes that figure could rise to $116 billion by 2025. And management is executing on a solid growth strategy.
For instance, CrowdStrike launched several new modules over the past year, including Extended Detection and Response (XDR). That's noteworthy because XDR captures security signals from corporate networks, endpoint devices, email systems, and cloud infrastructure, and it unifies that data in a single platform, improving visibility across the IT ecosystem. Put another way, XDR helps security professionals identify and remediate threats more quickly.
Here's the bottom line: CrowdStrike has a strong market position, and its powerful AI models (which become more intelligent with each new data point) and capacity for innovation should keep it at the forefront of the cybersecurity industry. With that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised to see its market cap grow fivefold in the next decade, from $41 billion today to $205 billion by 2032.
