The Nasdaq Composite fell into a bear market in March, and the tech-heavy index has yet to hit a new high. But that hasn't stopped wealthy investors from piling into growth stocks.
In May, Fred Ernest Ehrsam III, managing partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, invested $75 million in Coinbase Global (COIN 4.31%). That's a particularly bullish nod for the company because Ehrsam is a member of Coinbase's board of directors. Around the same time, hedge fund manager Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Capital Management invested $2 million in Confluent (CFLT 5.10%), and then he doubled down with another $618,000 in June. Altimeter Capital Management now owns more than 10% of the company.
Is it time to buy these growth stocks that millionaires are buying on the dip?
1. Coinbase Global
The Coinbase brand is synonymous with cryptocurrency. The company operates the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. as measured by trading volume, helping retail and institutional investors trade, store, and stake crypto assets. The company also provides blockchain infrastructure services through Coinbase Cloud, empowering developers to build crypto applications.
Coinbase breaks its business into two primary revenue segments: transaction fees and subscription and services fees. The former segment is based on the price and quantity of the crypto assets being bought or sold and currently accounts for the vast majority of total revenue. To that end, the ongoing crypto market crash has been devastating for Coinbase.
In the second quarter, monthly transacting users (MTUs) increased 2% to 9 million compared to the prior year, and trading volume fell 53% to $217 billion. And over the past year, revenue climbed just 17% to $5.8 billion, and the company posted a GAAP loss of $2.03 per diluted share, down significantly from a GAAP profit of $8.41 per diluted share in the prior year.
On the bright side, the subscription and services segment -- which offers more stability than volatile transaction fees -- is growing quickly. In the second quarter, 67% of MTUs engaged with non-investing products, up from 20% two years ago, and subscription and services revenue climbed 44% to $147 million. That trend was driven, in large part, by more engagement with staking services, particularly popular assets like Cardano and Solana.
More importantly, CEO Brian Armstrong has an admirable outlook on the recent downturn, framing it as an opportunity to build for the future. And Coinbase is doing just that. The company recently introduced a Web3 browser and a new self-managed Web3 wallet, allowing users to easily interact with decentralized applications (dApps) and decentralized finance (DeFi) services within the Coinbase app. That positions the company as a key player in the burgeoning crypto economy.
Here is the bottom line: Coinbase is, without doubt, a risky investment simply because its fate depends entirely on the adoption of cryptocurrency, a relatively new and underregulated asset class. But with Coinbase stock down 81% from its high, trading at just 1.9 times sales, crypto bulls should seriously consider buying a few shares right now.
2. Confluent
Businesses use more software applications each year, and the data created by those applications is often siloed in different systems across public clouds and private data centers. But those who manage to unify and make sense of that data stand to gain an advantage over their peers, and Confluent helps its customers accomplish that goal.
Confluent's platform captures data in real time, creating a stream of information that flows between all enterprise applications and systems. That real-time data can then be used by analytics platforms like Snowflake, observability software like Datadog, or custom applications to help businesses make informed decisions that improve the customer experience and drive operational efficiency.
Financially, Confluent is growing quickly on the top line, though it's still losing money on the bottom line. Revenue rose 66% to $488 million over the past year, while free cash flow dropped to a negative $143 million, down from a loss of $98 million in the prior year. However, Confluent has nearly $2 billion in cash and marketable securities on its balance, meaning it can afford to invest aggressively in growth.
On that note, Confluent saw its customer base increase 46% to 4,120 over the past year, and the average customer spent north of 30% more. That strong adoption bodes well for the future, and Confluent should continue to benefit as more businesses realize the value of bringing real-time data to their applications.
Last year, management valued its market opportunity at $91 billion by 2024, meaning Confluent has hardly scratched the surface. And with the share price 52% off its high, trading at a modest 12.8 times sales, now looks like a good time to buy a small position in this growth stock.
