Growth stocks are down in 2022 for a variety of reasons, ranging from continued pandemic-related supply chain issues to tough comparisons with a blistering 2021 to a hawkish Federal Reserve that's raising interest rates to control surging inflation to avoid a recession.
This explains, in part, why shares of Fortinet (FTNT 1.74%) and Skyworks Solutions (SWKS 1.21%) have been battered in 2022 despite reporting impressive earnings. Fortinet's stock price is down 30.3% this year and shares of Skyworks have slipped 36%.
While price drops aren't generally a good thing for stocks, they do open opportunities for investors looking to buy beaten-down stocks from promising companies at relatively attractive valuations. Let's look at the reasons why putting $500 in Fortinet and Skyworks could turn out to be a prudent long-term move.
1. Fortinet
Cybersecurity specialist Fortinet has outperformed the broader market by a big margin over the past decade. The stock has gained over 800% over this period, easily outpacing the S&P 500's gains of 166% over the same period. So a $500 investment in Fortinet stock a decade ago is worth more than $4,500 now.
It wouldn't be surprising to see the company repeat this impressive performance over the next decade. That's because the size of the market Fortinet operates in is set to grow at a faster pace in the future thanks to an increase in cyber threats.
The global cybersecurity market is forecast to be worth nearly $501 billion by 2030, growing at an annual pace of 12% from 2022 until the end of the decade. For comparison, global cybersecurity spending increased from $60 billion in 2012 to an estimated $150 billion last year. So Fortinet's end-market opportunity could more than triple in the next eight years, which would be a nice step up from the 2.5x growth seen in the past decade.
More importantly, Fortinet is on the right track to take advantage of this lucrative opportunity. The company is growing at a faster pace than the cybersecurity market, as evident from its second-quarter 2022 earnings. Fortinet's total revenue jumped 29% year over year to $1.03 billion, while adjusted net income increased to $0.24 per share from $0.19 per share in the year-ago period.
The company's deferred revenue (money collected in advance for services that will be rendered later and not yet logged as revenue) increased at a faster pace than its actual revenue. Fortinet's deferred revenue rose 35% year over year to $2.9 billion. The rapid growth in this metric is an indicator of a solid future revenue pipeline for Fortinet.
Fortinet management expects revenue to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 22% through 2025. Analysts are also upbeat about its prospects, forecasting 23% annual earnings growth for the next five years. All this indicates that Fortinet is a cybersecurity stock worth putting $500 into, especially considering that it is trading at 40 times forward earnings right now, a ratio lower than its five-year average forward earnings multiple of 47.
2. Skyworks Solutions
Skyworks Solutions is another beaten-down stock that investors may want to buy right now, as it is trading at just 12.7 times trailing earnings, a discount to the S&P 500's earnings multiple of 22. The stock's forward price-to-earnings ratio of 8.6 is also attractive and points toward an improvement in its bottom line.
Buying Skyworks at this valuation looks like a good idea given its catalysts and attractive dividend. It is worth noting that a $500 investment in Skyworks a decade ago would now be worth close to $2,000 despite the steep decline in its share price over the past year, assuming the dividends were reinvested.
It wouldn't be surprising to see the company deliver healthy upside in the future as well thanks to the secular demand for its chips, which are used in multiple applications ranging from smartphones to automotive to data centers to the Internet of Things (IoT). These multiple end markets drove healthy growth for Skyworks in the third quarter of fiscal 2022, which ended on July 1, 2022.
The company's revenue was up 10% year over year to $1.23 billion, driven by the robust demand for 5G smartphone chips. Additionally, Skyworks is witnessing a ramp-up in demand for chips used in electric vehicles and wearables. The chipmaker also scored multiple design wins at European equipment providers for powering 5G massive MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) deployments.
It is worth noting that all these markets are on track to record impressive long-term growth. The demand for 5G chipsets, for instance, is expected to increase at an annual pace of nearly 27% through 2027. Meanwhile, the automotive chipset market is expected to clock 12% annual growth over the same period.
So investors looking to buy a semiconductor stock that could give their portfolios a nice boost in the long run may want to take a closer look at Skyworks stock, as it is trading attractively right now and seems on track to sustain its growth momentum.
