There's no denying Meta Platforms (META -0.57%) -- the company formerly known as Facebook -- has been a rewarding stock. Even with their near-halving of its stock price just since September of last year, shares are still on the order of 1,000% above their post-IPO low hit in 2012.
But past performance is no guarantee of future results. The next 10 years could look very different than the past 10 have. And given that Meta's flagship social networking site Facebook is starting to show signs of slowing growth, odds are a little too good the company's next 10 years could indeed be lackluster. It may be time to start looking for names with more verifiable growth prospects rather than sticking with companies going on the defensive.
With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three different stocks that can actually answer the question, "What have you done for me lately?" All of them could easily be worth more than Meta come 2032.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Nvidia
You may know it as a brand name for computer graphics cards loved by video gamers, although you'll find its tech inside general-purpose PCs and laptops as well. And its hold on a sizable piece of this market is pretty secure. The bigger growth engine you may be overlooking with Nvidia (NVDA -1.54%), however, is its data center processing business. Of last quarter's $8.3 billion worth of revenue Nvidia generated, a little over $3.7 billion of it came from data center operators looking for newer, better technologies. In fact, with 83% year-over-year revenue growth, data centers are now Nvidia's biggest business.
And this is just the beginning.
As it turns out, the same processing architecture that powers graphics cards is also well suited for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, which is a fast-growing market, to say the least. Technology market research outfit Polaris forecasts the AI infrastructure market is set to grow at an average annual pace of more than 27% between now and 2030.
Nvidia is poised to capture more than its fair share of this growth. Its DGX A100 systems, for instance, are designed and built from the ground up specifically for the AI market. Enterprises love what it can do for their artificial intelligence development efforts too, ranging from energy management to medical imaging to combatting future pandemics, just to name a few.
2. Adobe
Adobe (ADBE -2.17%) is another technology company that's so much more than it used to be, without many investors even realizing it.
You'll likely recognize Adobe as the name behind the software allowing the web's users to effectively manage PDFs (portable document files); some people may also know that Adobe's Photoshop software largely pioneered the digital image and creation software market. And both are still around.
The company has moved well beyond graphics software and online document management, though. It's now waist-deep into businesses that help enterprises with websites optimize every aspect of their web presence. A cloud-based platform called Creative Cloud dramatically expands what the original Photoshop can do, while the company's Experience Cloud provides tools allowing a website to be customized for each particular user. Content management, e-commerce, and marketing campaigns are also part of this platform's repertoire. In fact, without even realizing it, it's possible you've visited a website ultimately customized by Adobe's tools.
Notably, Experience Cloud and Creative Cloud are offered on a subscription basis. While their monthly fee is relatively small, it's recurring revenue, meaning Adobe doesn't have to constantly come up with newer versions of its software, rebox them, and then hope that customers purchase an update. This shifting business model is one of the big reasons revenue is consistently growing at a double-digit pace. The top line is expected to improve by 13% this year before accelerating to early 15% growth next year, underscoring the idea that there's still plenty of business to be won.
3. Salesforce
Finally, add Salesforce (CRM -2.47%) to your list of stocks that could be worth more than Meta 10 years from now.
Salesforce was one of the web's earliest cloud computing names, launching all the way back in 1999, well before the term "cloud computing" became common. Given how much time has passed since then and how much new competition has crept into the customer relationship management software space, it would be easy to assume this company's best days are behind it. And as far as its high-growth days are concerned, they are in the past.
For a 23-year-old company, though, Salesforce still has a surprising number of tricks up its sleeve. Improvements like the expansion of task-automation tools and allowing users to directly interface with the popular social media platform TikTok are just a couple of updated reasons the analyst community is calling for revenue growth of 20% this year.
The stock's not cheap, mind you, priced at more than 40 times this fiscal year's expected per-share earnings. With those earnings expected to grow to the tune of 22% next year in step with a projected 18% revenue growth, though, this stock is arguably worth its premium price.
