Whether you're new to the stock market or you've been investing for decades, the first nine months of 2022 have been rough. The benchmark S&P 500 index is down 17% this year.
The NASDAQ Composite Index, which contains more growth stocks than the S&P 500, is down a frightening 27% in 2022. During market meltdowns like these, stocks with underlying businesses that are outperforming can fall just as easily as stocks with failing businesses.
I've bought both of these growth stocks over the past year, and they're down significantly. Instead of crying about it, though, I'm actually excited about a chance to lower my average entry price on these positions. Here's why.
1. SoFi Technologies
Shares of SoFi Technologies (SOFI -0.42%) have fallen around 78% since the company made its stock market debut in June of 2021. Early expectations may have been a little too high, but the company is performing much better than its stock chart suggests.
SoFi Technologies started out about a decade ago with an innovative student loan refinancing program, and now it's a full-service consumer bank that provides checking accounts, retirement accounts, auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards. Originating loans became a lot more lucrative in January when SoFi earned a national bank charter from U.S. regulators.
A bank charter allows SoFi to fund loans from a rapidly growing base of consumer checking and savings account deposits. At the end of June, SoFi members were using 5.3 million financial service products. That was twice as many as the company reported a year earlier.
In addition to a rapidly growing consumer banking segment, SoFi owns a leading financial technology platform called Galileo. Banks and other businesses that want to set up customer accounts and payment programs use Galileo's application programming interface (API) more often than any other. In fact, the number of accounts enabled by SoFi's tech platform soared 48% year over year to 117 million at the end of June.
Image source: Getty Images.
Despite being in a high growth phase, SoFi isn't burning through cash. In fact, management expects adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to come in somewhere between 6% to 7% of total revenue this year.
Rising interest rates mean SoFi has to offer higher rates on consumer deposits. Fortunately, the rates it's able to charge for loans and mortgages have risen even further. This means the bank's already good profit margin will most likely improve in 2023 and beyond.
2. Shockwave Medical
Shockwave Medical (SWAV 0.01%) makes medical devices that are quickly becoming part of the standard playbook for treating calcified arteries. This company develops and manufactures the first and only intravascular lithotripsy devices. These are essentially catheters that use sonic pressure waves to break up calcium deposits.
Using sound waves to break up calcium deposits might seem a little nutty, but it isn't any crazier than the standard technique, angioplasty. This is essentially a balloon that tries to bust up calcium deposits by stretching arteries from the inside out.
Clinical studies comparing outcomes for patients treated with angioplasty versus lithotripsy heavily favor Shockwave's proprietary devices. For example, this May, results from the Disrupt trial showed that blood is far more likely to continue flowing through an artery treated with Shockwave's device than traditional angioplasty.
Shockwave currently records most of its sales in the U.S., but this could change soon. In May, the company received approvals to begin selling its devices in China, where they could be used in the millions of procedures required each year.
Shockwave's operating performance has been so positive that even rising interest rates and fears of a recession can't damage the stock. It has gained around 49% this year. The latest big rise came in response to second-quarter sales that more than doubled year over year to reach $121 million. There are no guarantees, but international expansion in China and beyond could allow it to keep this pace for years to come.
