With the broader market on track to end the year at a loss, there's no shortage of cheap stocks to buy. Cheap can be relative. It's more typically associated with valuation, but a low stock price is still a low stock price. If you have $100 to spend, you can find amazing growth stocks with enormous potential.
Dutch Bros (BROS -0.66%), Revolve Group (RVLV 0.42%), and Shopify (SHOP 0.23%) are three top choices, and at today's prices, you can buy a share of each with $100.
1. A different kind of coffee chain
Dutch Bros is a fast-growing coffee shop chain that touts its friendly customer service and fun atmosphere. Oh, and it sells great coffee. Its revenue growth has been impressive, clocking in at 53% year over year in Q3 2022. But that hides an underlying, and potentially worrisome, fact: Nearly all of that growth comes from new stores.
For a company that operated 641 stores at the end of the third quarter, 138 were opened over the trailing 12 months. Dutch Bros opened a record 38 stores in Q3, with at least 30 stores opened in each of the last five quarters.
The obvious benefits of opening new stores quickly are an increase in revenue and better leveraging of resources through scaling. As expected, shop contribution margin widens with new store openings.
What that means is it costs just a bit more of variable costs to open each new store, since most of the non-variable costs it takes to run them are already being spent. That makes the operational expense management more efficient; each dollar goes further.
But there are several problems here. Notably, comparable-store sales (comps) aren't increasing. There was a 1.7% uptick in comps in the third quarter, but there was also a 9% jump in prices.
That masks falling volume. Stores need to increase sales to stay viable. Part of this comes from the second problem in Dutch Bros' approach, which is that as it opens new stores near existing locations, they cannibalize some of the sales from those stores.
Dutch Bros sees a market for 4,000 stores over the next 10 to 15 years. Some of these growing pains will ease as Dutch Bros enters new areas, scales down costs through higher operating leverage, and simply adds revenue. It posted its first quarterly profit in a year in Q3, which is nice progress, and there's tons of potential here. But there's also risk.
Dutch Bros stock cost $32 per share as of this writing, which is only 2 times trailing-12-month sales. At this price, it looks like a great deal.
2. A new era of fashion shopping
Revolve Group uses artificial intelligence to sell upmarket clothing to millennial and Gen Z shoppers. It has done this using social media influencers and by updating its web site with fast-moving merchandise that it changes up daily.
That's a big change from typical fashion companies that develop seasonal clothing lines that then take up real estate in expensive physical locations. Revolve Group is young and agile, and while racking up sales, it's also efficient and profitable.
High growth finally decelerated in Q3 2022 with a 10% year-over-year sales increase. But Revolve continues to invest in growth and launch projects and products that position it well to keep on expanding.
It generated $8.6 million in free cash flow in the third quarter, a 543% year-over-year jump, and it's strategically using those funds to set the foundation for a strong rebound when the macroeconomic outlook improves.
According to Statista, after dipping slightly year over year in 2022, the global apparel market is expected to climb annually and reach $1.94 trillion in 2027. Revolve could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this increase.
Global apparel market. Image source: Statista.
Revolve Group stock trades at $26 per share as of this writing, or 24 times trailing-12-month earnings. It's an excellent stock at a fabulous price.
3. Tops in e-commerce
Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce companies that doesn't actually sell products to individual customers, with more than $5 billion in trailing-12-month revenue. It's a hugely popular business-to-business platform, offering more and more services to clients that rely on it to conduct their own businesses.
Sales soared in the early phases of the pandemic as small businesses suddenly needed a web presence, and although they have stayed on and given Shopify an excellent source of monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the incredible growth has sputtered.
And while the company posted huge profits when sales exploded, profitability tanked over the past year as demand slowed, leaving it with huge infrastructure expenses it no longer needed.
The third quarter was ultimately a good one. Revenue increased 22% over last year, with an 8% jump in MRR. There were positive signs throughout, save for the turn from $1.1 billion in net income last year to a $158 million loss. Management is actively working to reduce the expenses and return to profitability, and long term, Shopify is well positioned to sign up more clients and keep posting growth.
Shopify stock is down 72% this year, which isn't surprising given both its net losses and what was a highly valued stock. Shares are trading at $38 as of this writing, or 9 times trailing-12-month sales.
That's not exactly cheap, and risk-averse investors may want to wait for a more attractive entry point. But in the long term, Shopify could be a multibagger.
