The market meltdown in the first half of 2022 was uncomfortable, but it also created many fantastic investment opportunities. Companies of impeccable quality are suddenly trading at rock-bottom prices. As long as you stick with wonderful businesses and hold them for at least five years, the shares you buy at today's bargain-bin discounts should deliver tremendous returns in the long run.
Here are two of my favorite investment ideas in this dangerous but opportunity-packed market. Spoiler alert: These companies address the same market from two very different angles.
The service-neutral streaming platform
Media-streaming technology expert Roku (ROKU 5.41%) is already a firmly established leader in its chosen field. Buying a smart TV in North America probably means you get Roku's operating system and media-streaming apps.
The company's market share here was 56% in March 2022, far ahead of Apple and Samsung, which battle for second place with market shares of less than 20% each. That duel has been going on for years, and neither have been able to steal any meaningful market share from Roku.
Roku's dominance in the crucial American market sets the company up to benefit from the digital streaming trend on a fundamental level. No matter which content studios and streaming services are winning consumer hearts and wallet share in the long run, every content source worth its salt needs to work with the market-leading Roku platform.
The situation is different overseas. Roku is so tightly focused on North America that it doesn't even break out international results in its financial filings. All you get in those documents is the admission that international sales consistently account for less than 10% of the company's total revenue, and hence don't have to be reported in greater detail.
That imbalance smells like a growth vector to me. Roku is poised to follow in the illustrious footsteps of Netflix (NFLX 4.17%) here. The global leader of the streaming video industry manages a deeply international user base nowadays, where only one-third of its 221 million subscribers hail from North American shores. Ten years ago, 88% of Netflix's subscribers were found in the domestic market.
I'm not saying that Roku will follow the same path to international growth without lifting a finger. In fact, it will take hard work and lots of time to achieve similar growth figures. However, Roku is perfectly poised to attempt to follow Netflix's example.
At the same time, the streaming market itself continues to expand as consumers around the world ditch their cable and broadcast TV services in favor of digital solutions. Suitable broadband connections and digital payment services are also becoming more widely available in developing nations, giving companies like Roku more support for their subscription-based business plans.
In last month's second-quarter report, inflation and macroeconomic pressure tripped up Roku's nascent advertising services. And many investors are backing away from fast-growing but unprofitable companies like Roku right now. The advertising stumbles provided more fuel for the bearish argument against this stock. As a result of these headwinds, it's down 65% in 2022.
But I expect the advertising market and Roku's ad platform to undergo a full recovery over the next year or two, giving this side project a chance to deliver profitable growth for the long haul. And the company should start pushing into international markets soon enough, opening the doors to a much larger addressable market. The lessons learned in America will come in handy to support Roku's international ambitions.
So buying Roku stock at these deeply discounted prices looks like an intelligent wealth-building move.
The content-making household name
You don't have to go far away from Roku to find my next top-shelf investment idea. Walt Disney (DIS 1.54%) is trading 24% lower this year. The stock is changing hands at valuation ratios well below Disney's historical averages, and the company is flexing its industry-defining muscles in the streaming market.
In this week's third-quarter report, for example, Disney said it added 14.4 million subscribers to the streaming services Disney+ and Hotstar. The company's total number of streaming subscribers now stands at 231.1 million, passing Netflix's global customer count for the first time.
At the same time, Disney is switching gears in the streaming sector. The company announced price increases for all of its domestic streaming services, which should boost their top-line contributions but cool down the subscriber growth. But a free-to-watch version of Disney+ is coming soon, bringing a fully ad-supported option for the most price-sensitive viewers.
The company threw its full weight behind streaming content in 2021, and the audacious bet is already paying off. So if you prefer a media streaming investment with a deeper focus on content production, you can skip Roku and go straight to the House of Mouse instead. Both stocks should serve you well in the coming years, and even decades. Their low share prices are just icing on the lucrative cake.
