It's been quite the year for the investing community. They've witnessed the S&P 500's worst first-half return since 1970, endured back-to-back quarters of U.S. gross domestic product declines, and are navigating their way through the most inflationary environment in four decades. It's no wonder the S&P 500 and tech-centric Nasdaq Composite fell firmly into bear market territory.
But when there's peril on Wall Street, there's always opportunity. That's because every double-digit percentage downdraft in the major indexes has eventually been cleared away by a bull market. For patient investors with an eye for innovation, it's the perfect time to go shopping for growth stocks. And what better place is there to find that growth potential than the Nasdaq 100?
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The Nasdaq 100 is comprised of the 100 largest nonfinancial stocks listed on the Nasdaq exchange. It's also packed with many of the companies that led Wall Street higher over the past five years. What follows are four Nasdaq 100 stocks that have the innovative capacity to turn $300,000 into $1 million by 2029.
Amazon
The first top-tier innovator within the Nasdaq 100 that can deliver a 233% return over the next seven years is e-commerce behemoth Amazon (AMZN -0.16%). While some folks might be skeptical of a $1.45 trillion company more than tripling in value in seven years, it all comes down to Amazon's impressive operating cash flow growth.
It's no secret that Amazon is best known for its leading online marketplace. This year, Amazon is expected to bring in roughly 40% of all online retail sales in the U.S., which is more than eight percentage points higher than the share held by its 14 closest competitors on a combined basis. But while online retail generates a lot of revenue for Amazon, it's a generally low-margin operating segment. The real pull for this company is going to come from subscription services and cloud infrastructure.
For example, Amazon has been able to pivot its online success into signing up more than 200 million Prime members worldwide, as of April 2021. Based on the annual fee for Prime of $139 (the cheapest renewal option), Amazon is collecting, at minimum, $28 billion in high-margin revenue that it can use to support its rapidly growing logistics network or funnel into other innovative projects.
There's also Amazon Web Services (AWS), which Canalys estimates brought in 33% of global cloud-service spending in the first quarter of 2022. Cloud growth is still in the very early innings, which should allow AWS to maintain a 25%+ annual sales growth rate. What's more, despite accounting for between 15% and 16% of net sales for Amazon, AWS is generating the bulk of the company's operating cash flow. AWS could realistically help quadruple or quintuple Amazon's cash flow by 2029.
Airbnb
A second phenomenal Nasdaq 100 stock with the capacity to turn $300,000 into a cool $1 million over the next seven years is stay-and-hosting platform Airbnb (ABNB 0.68%). Although Airbnb isn't inexpensive, it has a plan of action that's revolutionizing the $8 trillion travel industry.
Whereas the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked Airbnb's hosting platform for a short period, bookings have returned with a vengeance. In each of the past two quarters, the company has reported aggregated nights and experiences booked of more than 100 million. Since 2016, total nights/experiences booked have climbed from approximately 52 million to what'll likely be well in excess of 400 million in 2022. Not even historically high inflation can quell the desire of consumers and businesspeople to travel.
What's more, the pandemic has created a hybrid-work environment where some employees are no longer tethered to a single location. With Airbnb's marketplace still relatively small and millions of new hosts likely to join in the coming years, these remote workers are powering Airbnb with extended stays of 28 or more days.
But the most exciting long-term driver might be the ability for Airbnb to forge partnerships with food, transportation/travel, and entertainment businesses. While it already partners with local experts to take travelers on experiences, this represents the tip of the iceberg in securing a bigger piece of the $8 trillion travel industry pie.
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PayPal Holdings
A third high-growth Nasdaq 100 stock with the tools needed to turn $300,000 into $1 million by 2029 is fintech giant PayPal Holdings (PYPL -0.13%).
The telltale sign that PayPal is on track to become one of the largest companies in the world can be seen in its operating results through the first six months of the year. Even with historically high inflation disproportionately hurting the lowest tier of earners, PayPal has delivered low double-digit percentage total payment volume (TPV) growth across its network on a constant currency basis. If the U.S. economy is in a "technical recession" and digital payments growth is sustained in the double digits, imagine how powerful PayPal's TPV growth can be during the substantially longer periods where the U.S. economy is expanding.
As a PayPal shareholder, what's arguably even more impressive is how effective the company has been at keeping users engaged. As of the end of 2020, the average active account was completing just shy of 41 transactions per 12 months. By the end of June 2022, the average active account was up to nearly 49 transactions per 12 months. PayPal is primarily a fee-driven platform, which means increased engagement is an easy pathway to higher gross profit.
PayPal is continuing to grow inorganically as well. It acquired Japan's buy now, pay later (BNPL) service Paidy in 2021, and could reasonably add more BNPL support or perhaps an e-commerce service to the mix to lift its already impressive growth potential.
Meta Platforms
The fourth and final Nasdaq 100 stock that can turn $300,000 into $1 million by 2029 is yet another FAANG stock, Meta Platforms (META -0.09%). Meta is the company formerly known as Facebook.
While Meta is contending with the same near-term concerns adversely affecting most growth stocks, investors appear to be overlooking how valuable the company's ad-driven assets remain. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, all of which Meta owns, have consistently been among the most downloaded apps in the world. In fact, over half the world's adult population visited a Meta-owned asset in the most recent quarter. This explains why Meta enjoys such impressive ad-pricing power more often than not.
But what makes Meta such an upside wildcard are its bountiful investments in the metaverse. The "metaverse" is the next iteration of the internet that'll allow connected users to interact with each other and their surroundings in a 3D virtual world. Even though no one is entirely sure what the metaverse will entail, Facebook is aiming to be a key gateway to this up to $30 trillion opportunity.
The cherry on top for Meta is that it's historically cheap. Shares can be purchased for less than 16 times Wall Street's forecast earnings for 2023, despite Meta retaining all of its competitive advantages and likely enjoying a sustained double-digit growth rate during periods of economic expansion.
