The recent bear market dampened a lot of the interest in hypergrowth stocks. As a result, many of the top growth names lost more than three-fourths of their value over the past year or so as traders shifted their focus more toward loss avoidance.
Despite the stock price drops, some names continue to post phenomenal growth numbers, particularly stocks in the cloud sector. These hypergrowth stocks have suffered in the bear market, but the drops will allow long-term investors to buy companies such as MercadoLibre (MELI 4.39%) and Snowflake (SNOW 2.72%) at a discount.
Let's take a look at why these two stocks are buys in 2022 and beyond.
1. MercadoLibre
MercadoLibre is an easy hypergrowth stock for U.S. investors to overlook. For one, it operates exclusively in Latin America, meaning the average American investor would likely not interact with the company. Moreover, news from Latin America may involve high inflation in Argentina or election turmoil in Brazil, which might lead investors to assume the region is not a robust e-commerce environment.
Still, MercadoLibre managed to drive hypergrowth by addressing Latin America's challenges. Amid market obstacles, the company's $7.5 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2022 rose 53% versus the same period in 2021.
And investors need to learn about the real reason behind MercadoLibre's wild success. The hypergrowth comes from its fintech segment, Mercado Pago. The company created Mercado Pago so its cash-dependent customers could buy online.
However, that has evolved into a business meeting the fintech needs of customers and businesses outside MercadoLibre. Total payment volume surged 76% year over year in Q3, a testament to the company's success in the fintech space.
NASDAQ: MELI
Key Data Points
This does not mean MercadoLibre escaped the bear market. The stock lost more than half of its value since early 2021. But in recent months, it sold at around a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 5. The last time it was that cheap was during the financial crisis.
Since the stock has proven its ability to grow rapidly under challenging economic and political conditions, one might consider adding shares while MercadoLibre is still inexpensive.
2. Snowflake
Snowflake provides data cloud services, helping businesses store, manage, and secure data in a central location. This allows enterprises to keep data safe without compromising data integrity or worrying about multiple versions of siloed data that may or may not be up to date.
Instead, the concerns about Snowflake pertain to its competitors. It competes with Amazon's AWS, the Microsoft platform Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud, companies that all boast market caps above $900 billion. In comparison, Snowflake's market cap stands at $47 billion.
However, Snowflake holds one advantage above its competitors' data clouds -- it can manage data regardless of the infrastructure platform it uses. That was likely one factor that attracted a pre-IPO investment from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
Another is the growth itself. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2023 (which ended Oct. 31), the company generated almost $1.5 billion in revenue. This was an increase of 77% versus the year-ago quarter. Since cloud services tend to save enterprises money, a sluggish economy has not significantly slowed adoption.
NYSE: SNOW
Key Data Points
Nonetheless, the stock is down by more than 60% from its November 2021 high, likely on valuation concerns. And even after that decline, Snowflake trades at an astounding 29 P/S ratio.
While that is a high sales multiple in a brutal bear market, it is also near record lows in the growth tech stock's two-year trading history. Given the stock's massive revenue growth and straightforward value proposition, this may be as close to "cheap" as Snowflake gets for the foreseeable future.
