Few investors will be sorry to see 2022 go. It would be an understatement to say it has been a challenging year for stocks. And few sectors have fared worse than tech stocks -- the Nasdaq 100 Technology Sector index plummeted 45% from its peak to its low point.
But savvy investors understand that such dramatic corrections represent unique opportunities. The losses associated with every bear market have always been wiped clean by the bull market rally that invariably follows. Now that valuations have been reset and once high-flying stocks sporting untouchable premiums are affordable again, it's time to carefully pick through the wreckage.
Buying the following pair of leading tech stocks today could pay off handsomely for patient investors now and well into the future.
Image source: Getty Images.
Can we call Pinterest (PINS 1.02%) a recession-resistant stock? It's way too early in its lifecycle to make that determination -- it only went public in 2019, after all -- but the clues we got from how it fared during the lockdown portion of the COVID pandemic might just indicate it will do better than most if the economy tanks next year as expected.
While conditions (hopefully) won't be as bad as they were back then when people were driven into their homes and businesses were forced to close, we saw that people used their down time to plan for the future. They took to Pinterest in droves to search out ideas for what they would do when times got better, and with 445 million monthly active users, the site is a marketer's dream destination.
Of course, Pinterest makes its money from advertisers. Platforms like like Meta Platform's Facebook, Alphabet's Google, and Snap's Snapchat are competing for a shrinking pool of advertising dollars this year, and suffered from significant declines in ad growth.
Pinterest, however, saw an 8% increase in revenue in the third quarter, hitting $685 million, which is due to advertisers understanding that Pinterest users are collating ideas with an eye to spending money on a project in the future. Pinterest is a stock perfectly aligned with e-commerce, and its revenue per user continues to grow, up 11% last quarter and part of a consistent trend of double-digit growth.
With plenty of cash, equivalents, and short-term investments available (almost $3 billion worth), Pinterest should have the financial ability to withstand any short-term market gyrations while still investing for future growth.
Image source: Getty Images.
Crowdstrike
Cybersecurity outfit Crowdstrike (CRWD 2.30%) is proving it's not necessarily a recession-resistant stock -- its latest quarterly earnings report shows that gaining new customers is becoming more difficult, regardless of whether the business is large or small. Yet because protecting company and customer data from hackers has such a long-term growth trajectory, investors should still consider Crowdstrike as an investment now.
Annual recurring revenue (ARR) surged 53% to $580 million, but a 17% increase in net new ARR of just $198 million fell well short of its expectations, as well as those of Wall Street analysts. It expects NNARR to be lower in the fourth quarter too, which will cause full-year revenue growth to miss forecasts as well.
Why buy now then? While Crowdstrike is facing some strong headwinds, its growing list of customers isn't abandoning it: Its dollar-based net retention rate, or the ARR of existing clients compared to the ARR from the same customers a year ago, remains well above its 120% targeted base. It is also adept at landing large, enterprise-level customers and getting them to buy more modules from it. Subscription customers that have bought five or more modules was 60%.
It's also not as though ARR won't grow -- it's simply being pushed out to future quarters as customers stagger their purchases.
With that said, investors do need to keep an eye on the stock-based compensation Crowdstrike is handing out, which, at $140 million in the latest quarter, represents more than a quarter of the revenue the cybersecurity specialist generated and is over 60% higher than last year.
Shares have been cut in half from their 52-week high, and though it may not be the rocket ride it was, cybercrime remains a growing threat. You might not catch the bottom buying in right now, but CrowdStrike looks like a long-term winner for your portfolio regardless.
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