The 2022 bear market has been brutal for certain pockets of the investing world. Sectors like electric vehicle stocks or special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) saw share prices decline by as much as 80% over the past year. If you invested significantly in these types of companies, it might be wise to switch up your allocations going forward and invest some of your future funds in businesses that actually generate profits and have a consistent track record of doing so. While not as exciting as riding the hot new trend on Wall Street, buying tried-and-true companies can help you build wealth over the long haul and diversify your overall portfolio.
Here are two safe and reliable stocks to own as we navigate this bear market.
1. Alphabet: The search engine specialist
My first pick is Alphabet (GOOG 0.74%) (GOOGL 0.55%) a company almost every internet user in the world has a relationship with. It owns Google, YouTube, Android, and many other consumer internet businesses, with billions of users between them. The most important of these is its search engine, which has a 90%-plus market share around the world, making it a virtual monopoly. Just last quarter, the Google Search segment did over $40 billion in revenue for Alphabet and likely generated the majority of its $19.45 billion in operating profit. As more and more people join the internet globally, investors should expect this segment to steadily grow and generate consistent profits for Alphabet.
Besides search, Alphabet has two promising growth segments in YouTube and Google Cloud. Last quarter, YouTube did $7.34 billion in advertising revenue, which was almost double the amount it made two years ago. Google Cloud generated $6.3 billion in revenue, which was more than double the $3 billion in sales it did two years ago. Both segments are not nearly as large as Google Search right now but can help drive growth for Alphabet over the coming decade.
Over the last 12 months, Alphabet generated $72 billion in net income. At the current prices, that gives the stock a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 18.5, which is almost exactly at the market average of 18.4. With a monopoly in search and multiple avenues to drive more revenue growth this decade, this looks like a great time to purchase shares of Alphabet.
GOOG PE Ratio data by YCharts
2. Nelnet: Diversified businesses and safe loans
Basically the opposite of Alphabet, my second safe stock pick is likely only familiar to you if you've taken out student loans: Nelnet (NNI 0.06%). The small-cap conglomerate is one of the largest student loan servicers in the United States, but actually owns a ton of different businesses. We can separate them into two parts: student loans and non-student loans.
Nelnet's student loan business has two segments. First, it owns a portfolio of student loans. This loan book is estimated to generate $1.72 billion in cash flow for Nelnet over the life of the assets, the majority of which is coming in the next few years. Since the assets are securitized, this cash flow will be reduced if student loans are forgiven and people pay back their loans quicker, with management estimating the cash flow to come down to only $1.14 billion if that is the case.
However, this means the cash flow will come to Nelnet earlier, which is better for shareholders. Second, the company has a loan servicing business, which is currently doing over $10 million in quarterly operating income, even with student loans on pause for many borrowers. As one of the only loan servicers in the nation, this should be a consistent profit generator for Nelnet unless student loans go away for good.
The non-student loan segments for Nelnet include an education software unit that does $100 million in revenue, a bank that was started in 2020, and an investment portfolio of venture capital, solar panel, and real estate assets. It is hard to value these individual businesses, but Nelnet poured tons of money into them over the last few years. For example, from 2013-2021, Nelnet invested almost $1.5 billion into venture capital, solar, and real estate projects, the majority of which happened in 2020 and 2021. While investors don't have great insight into how these projects are doing, they have the potential to drive tremendous value for shareholders when you compare it to the company's current market cap of $3 billion.
Don't expect Nelnet's or Alphabet's stock prices to be immune from falling further during this bear market and possible recession. But with rock-solid business fundamentals, you can be confident they will be intact when we eventually come out the other side.
