The first half of 2022 is a period that growth stock investors would like to forget ever happened. The Nasdaq Composite index, which is laden with innovative tech companies, collapsed an unimaginable 29.5% in the first six months of the year.
With interest rates on the rise, cash flows far into the future are worth a lot less now, and this situation could get worse before it gets better. The Federal Reserve is determined to tame inflation by raising interest rates even if it pushes the prices of growth stocks down into the dirt.
Rising rates are troublesome, but the beatings received by Upstart Holdings (UPST -1.64%) and Zoom Video Communications (ZM -0.35%) have gone way too far. Unlike most disruptive tech businesses that went public in late 2020 and early 2021, both of these companies are producing positive cash flows now.
Bankers on Wall Street might shake their heads, but investors on Main Street will be glad to know they can add two shares of Zoom and six shares of Upstart to their portfolio for a little less than $419 at the moment. Here's how these stocks could rise tenfold in the years ahead.
1. Zoom Video
Shares of Zoom rocketed higher during the pandemic's early days because businesses that hadn't even considered allowing their employees to work remotely had to adapt overnight. Since peaking in late 2020, though, Zoom's stock price has lost more than four-fifths of its value.
In addition to the virtual meetings that we're all familiar with, the company is differentiating itself from a slew of competing services so subscribers stick around. For example, the company launched a software development kit in June that developers are using to custom build their own Zoom applications.
Microsoft Teams offers competing collaboration tools but they aren't keeping enterprise customers from flocking to Zoom. Existing enterprise customers spent 123% more during the 12 months ended March 31 than they did in the previous year's period.
The number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in annual revenue jumped 46% year over year. At just 2,916 of them, though, there's still a lot of room to grow.
2. Upstart
This innovative fintech was a market darling following its initial public offering in late 2020, but the good times didn't last long. Upstart's stock price peaked last October and has since lost more than 90% of its value.
Since the 1980s, three-digit Fair Isaac (FICO -0.36%) scores have been the main way financial institutions evaluate credit risk for individual borrowers. If those potential borrowers haven't jumped through the right hoops, though, prohibitively low scores can end their relationship with a lender before it begins.
Upstart's lending platform uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to incorporate more data points than troublesome FICO scores. This allows the company to find creditworthy borrowers whom financial institutions wouldn't have considered otherwise.
Banks and other lenders have been beating a path to Upstart's doors. In the first quarter of 2022, revenue from fees soared 170% year over year to $314 million. That was more than enough to cover operating expenses that reached just $275 million over the same time frame.
Upstart has a lot of room to grow. Instead of focusing entirely on personal loans, the company is currently expanding into the market for auto loans, which is at least six times larger than the personal-loan market. According to TransUnion, the addressable market for Upstart's auto loan segment is worth around $751 billion annually.
Since Upstart is originating heaps more loans than any other start-up trying to take on FICO, its AI engine has more data to learn from. With an expanding lead in the lucrative space for individual credit-risk assessments, the sky is the limit for this stock.