When the markets keep falling for several months, it can seem hopeless to ever reach your retirement goals. But market corrections don't prevent companies from continuing to invest to expand their operations. Choose the right stocks and you could be sitting on large gains in 10 years.
To give you some ideas, three Motley Fool contributors have done the hard work for you and identified three stocks worth buying today. Here's why they like Wayfair (W -8.36%), Chegg (CHGG -0.29%), and MercadoLibre (MELI -1.79%).
Take advantage of the sale at Wayfair
John Ballard (Wayfair): It may not make sense to invest in a company that has reported four consecutive quarters of declining revenue, but successful investing is about the future. Wayfair is about to make it through the worst of the supply shortages that have plagued its business over the last year. Investors who buy the stock while it's down could be in for a truly wealth-building return in the next 10 years.
Shares of the leading online home goods brand have fallen 85% from their highs. Wayfair has similar advantages to Amazon in retail, but specific to the home goods market, such as a massive selection of items sourced from thousands of suppliers.
Wayfair is building out an unbeatable delivery network that quickly delivers items to customers as efficiently as possible. The company has a key advantage with its CastleGate logistics infrastructure that is specifically designed to handle large, bulky furniture.
Wayfair is looking at a massive addressable market estimated at over $800 billion for the home category. That's the estimate for North America and Western Europe alone. With $13 billion in trailing-12-month revenue, Wayfair can grow for many years.
As supply shortages ease, Wayfair will return to growth. There's no other place consumers can shop a vast inventory of thousands of home items at affordable prices.
The best part is the value. Investors can buy shares of Wayfair at a price-to-sales ratio of 0.47, which is incredibly cheap compared to other e-commerce companies.
Data by YCharts
A growth stock with a competitive advantage selling cheaply
Parkev Tatevosian (Chegg): The bear market in 2022 has created several opportunities for investors to buy growth stocks on the dip. One of my favorite downtrodden growth stocks is the education technology company Chegg. The stock is down 82% off its highs and trading at its lowest valuation in years. It holds a strong competitive advantage through its treasure trove of content assets, which has allowed it to boost operating income considerably.
Chegg primarily serves college students studying their course curriculum. The company offers a subscription service where students can access Chegg's 79 million pieces of proprietary content for less than $20 per month. Additionally, for concepts on which Chegg does not have content, students can ask 20 questions per month that will be answered by Chegg's subject matter experts. Those step-by-step explanations to student queries then become available for subscribers (present and future) to view and learn from.
Chegg has spent years building this database of information precisely requested by students. It would be expensive and time-consuming for a competitor to infringe in this way. That partly explains why Chegg increased revenue from $255 million to $776 million between 2017 and 2021. Moreover, with the content as a low-cost, highly effective customer acquisition tool, Chegg has boosted its operating income from negative $23 million to $78 million in that time.
CHGG Price to Free Cash Flow data by YCharts
Fortunately for investors, Chegg is trading at a price-to-free cash flow multiple of 18.22, near the lowest in the previous five years. Rising profitability, a substantial competitive advantage, and a favorable valuation make Chegg an excellent stock to buy before a big rally makes you wish you'd bought at a lower price.
A huge opportunity in Latin American fintech
Jennifer Saibil (MercadoLibre): Stock price declines across growth and tech stocks are the result of a pressured microenvironment and what were unsustainably high valuations. But as prices tumble, they're taking some high-performing stocks along for the ride, including MercadoLibre.
MercadoLibre is a Latin American e-commerce powerhouse, with headquarters in Argentina and operations in 18 countries, all south of the U.S. border. It has a strong lead in most of these countries with a first-mover's edge, and its continuous upgrading of its platform lets it dominate even as other start-ups enter its markets.
Even as it faces tough, triple-digit comps from last year, it's posting high double-digit growth. Sales increased 67% in the 2022 first quarter, on top of 158% last year, and gross merchandise volume increased 31% over last year. Items per buyer increased as well, and there were over 40 million unique buyers.
It has a fintech segment as well to make make e-commerce purchases simple, especially for the highly underbanked Latin American population. Its digital payments service, MercadoPago, is rapidly gaining users, and total payment volume increased 81% over last year. It's also gaining ground outside of customers using the MercadoPago app solely as part of the MercadoLibre e-commerce system, and the fintech take rate, or the fees it takes from fintech payments, increased in the first quarter.
It's growing its loan book in this segment as well. It increased from $1.7 billion at the end of 2021 to $2.4 billion at the end of the 2022 first quarter, mostly due to more personal loans and consumer credit from its credit card services.
As big as it is, MercadoLibre has a huge addressable market in the 600 billion-plus Latin American population, and its investments in its platform help pad its moat, making it hard for any competitor to pose a real threat.
Despite all of this, MercadoLibre's stock has plummeted this year. It's down 43% this year, and that's with a 22% rise over the past month.
Shares trade at a price-to-sales ratio of 4.6, and enterprise value/earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of 46, both quite low for a company posting high-double-digit revenue growth. This is a high-potential stock trading at a cheap price, and it's an opportunity not to miss.
