Cathie Wood's ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK -0.47%) invests in companies that have massive potential to benefit from breakthroughs in disruptive innovation, specifically in fields like genomic sequencing, gene editing, and artificial intelligence.
Of course, great opportunity doesn't come without risks. With that in mind, let's look at three businesses in her ETF with great potential -- as well as some challenges -- to consider buying and holding for the next decade. Each of these three stocks accounts for between 4% and 5% of ARK's total holdings.
1. Teladoc Health
Teladoc Health's (TDOC 0.76%) claim to fame is its flagship telehealth service, which uses its digital platform to connect subscribers to healthcare professionals like doctors via a phone call or video call.
While it's true that telehealth isn't a solution that's applicable to every health issue someone might have, the convenience of having a doctor one phone call away is tough to beat. Plus, one of the company's major appeals to patients is that they can chat with a telehealth doctor to figure out whether it'll be necessary to seek follow-up care at an in-person clinic. And that's something the company will be more and more effective at doing over the coming years thanks to its growing body of patient-owned medical sensors and other connected devices.
In the long term, those integrated sensors should help Teladoc to realize its vision of building a service ecosystem that its subscribers use to navigate the first few steps (and perhaps the last few steps) in their healthcare journey from diagnosis to treatment and recovery. With sensor data informing care decisions to drive favorable health outcomes, it's likely that the company's subscriber base and top line will continue to grow, generating monster returns for shareholders in the process.
In the near term, however, investors will need to dial their expectations a bit lower. The company isn't profitable yet, and it's struggling to progress toward breaking even. Buying it now means waiting for Teladoc to prove that its business model is sustainable, which is a significant risk. But if Cathie Wood is right about its potential to reshape healthcare access and delivery, its dominance in telehealth should eventually make it worth your while.
2. Intellia Therapeutics
Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA 1.01%) is a genome-editing biotech working to make therapies to treat or even cure hereditary illnesses. It has no products on the market or recurring revenue outside of its drug development collaborations, but it's currently in early-stage clinical trials with its treatments for transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis, sickle cell disease (SCD), and acute myeloid leukemia, to name a few.
Cathie Wood's endorsement of the stock isn't surprising. It's a prototype for developing disruptive innovations in genomics into profitable products, which could be extremely profitable. But it's still in need of a proof-of-concept therapy that passes the stringent requirements of late-stage clinical trials.
So if you invest today, you'll need to wait at least a handful of years for any major returns, and more importantly, you'll also need the company to succeed in leveraging its genetic technologies to safely address conditions using approaches that nobody else has tried before.
Intellia is a risky investment. Clinical trials can fail, and even if they succeed, competitors could take the day anyway. On that note, let's look at another Cathie Wood stock that's one of Intellia's peers.
3. CRISPR Therapeutics
Much like Intellia Therapeutics, CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP 3.72%) is a biotech devoted to using cutting-edge gene editing to address previously intractable hereditary conditions like sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia.
It's in clinical-stage trials for those conditions as well as several others in oncology. But much like Intellia, investors will need to wait for several years before any of the treatments have a chance of hitting the market, assuming that any ever do. And despite CRISPR's drug development collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, recurring revenue won't be on the way anytime soon.
Therefore, if you're going to make a bet on Intellia succeeding over the next 10 years or so, it makes sense to diversify by betting on CRISPR Therapeutics, too. If the latter business keeps developing its own gene-editing technologies, it'll likely continue to be a leader in the space down the line.
And if Cathie Wood is to be believed, that leadership will be highly rewarding for the investors of today, assuming they can stomach the risk.
