Tech stocks have gotten slammed this year, but long-term investors shouldn't give up on the sector.
It's still one of best areas of the stock market if you want growth, especially if you're a buy-and-hold investor. And if you're looking for tech stocks you can buy and hold for the next decade, there are a few basic guidelines you'll want to follow.
You'll want to find companies that are penetrating massive addressable markets, are growing rapidly, and have proven the ability to be profitable. It helps if they have competitive advantages, or are the leaders in their respective niches.
Keep reading to see two stocks that can deliver over the next decade.
1. A unique e-commerce player
Following a boom during the pandemic, 2022 has been a rough year for Etsy (ETSY -2.17%). Growth in gross merchandise sales (GMS) has ground to a halt and the company took a goodwill impairment charge of more than $1 billion in its most recent quarter, acknowledging it overpaid for its acquisitions of Depop and Elo7.
However, that's no reason to dismiss Etsy, which occupies a unique niche in e-commerce, operating marketplaces that specialize in one-of-a-kind products like handmade goods and vintage items. The company sells things you can't generally find in stores or on other websites, giving it a wide economic moat. Even Amazon notoriously flopped in its attempt to create an Etsy-knockoff site, Amazon Handmade, and it seems unlikely that anyone else will pose a challenge to Etsy in its core business as a crafts-based marketplace.
That gives Etsy a lot of opportunity for growth and should ensure it continues to generate a wide profit margin. In its most recent quarter, Etsy had an adjusted EBITDA margin of 28%, and the company is pursuing an addressable market of at least $100 billion. In the last four quarters, Etsy's gross merchandise sales were slightly over $12 billion, meaning it can still grow significantly before it reaches that ceiling.
After the impairment charge, it may pump the brakes on the "house of brands" strategy, where it acquires adjacent e-commerce businesses and applies the same tactics that have made Etsy successful. But the company is likely to continue making acquisitions that fit with its larger corporate strategy if good opportunities become available.
Etsy should return to stable growth once consumer buying habits normalize. With little direct competition, a large and expanding addressable market, and strong profit margins, the e-commerce stock should deliver above-average returns over the next decade.
2. The leading online matchmaker
Like Etsy, Match Group (MTCH 0.79%) is the clear leader in its niche. The company owns dozens of online dating brands, including Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid.
The stock was a market darling for much of its history, but lately investors seem to have fallen out of love with Match, and shares are down sharply this year, off 64% year to date.
Interest in online dating boomed during the pandemic, but as the economy has reopened, the business has slowed now that users have returned to other interests.
In its third quarter, revenue increased just 1%, or 10% in constant currency, to $810 million, while adjusted operating income was nearly flat as well. However, Match faces relatively little direct competition in online dating, and the nature of its business model, which makes money primarily from subscriptions, allows it to generate wide operating margins. In the third quarter, Match's GAAP operating margin was 26%, and on an adjusted basis, it was 35%. As a scalable platform, those margins should continue to grow as it adds new subscribers.
At the time of its IPO in 2015, the company estimated it had an addressable market of 511 million adults and expected that to grow to 672 million by 2019.
With average annual revenue per user of nearly $200, that would give Match an addressable market of around $130 billion per year. Suppose Match can lock down a substantial slice of that massive market opportunity. In that case, the company gets a long growth path given that it's currently on track for roughly $3.2 billion in annual revenue.
Beyond dating apps, there are other long-term dating opportunities, including through the metaverse, which the company experimented with but pulled back on more recently.
While the hypergrowth days for online dating may be over now that it's become mainstream for single adults, the company should still be able to grow as it enters new countries, acquires and creates new apps, and capitalizes on future computing platforms.
Finally, the stock looks well priced, trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of less than 25 after adjusting for a $27 million impairment charge it took on Hyperconnect, a global social platform.
From that valuation, it won't take much for Match to outperform the market over the next decade.
