As we enter the new year, if you're looking for the best stocks to buy and hold for five to 10 years or longer, you have no shortage of discounted options these days. While share prices remain depressed across many sectors of the market, strong businesses are still proving their investment theses out and are well positioned to recover.
If you have the cash to add to your portfolio right now, don't overlook these two unstoppable stocks.
1. Amazon: The e-commerce giant and so much more
Amazon (AMZN 3.43%) hasn't wowed investors over the past year, but a closer look beyond the last few quarters paints a far less bleak picture. As always, it's important to look beyond share price when assessing a stock for your portfolio. Case in point: If you only looked at the company's share price -- which is down more than 50% over the trailing 12 months -- you might be led to assume that Amazon is flailing. Far from it, in fact.
While it's true that its top- and bottom-line results in the most recent quarter weren't quite what Wall Street had hoped, Amazon fully met its own guidance. Net sales were up 15% on a year-over-year basis to $127 billion. Even as net income was down from the year-ago period, the company was still highly profitable, with its bottom line coming in at $3 billion. It's also worth noting that two key business segments for Amazon, cloud computing and advertising, are continuing to grow at a rapid clip.
For example, Amazon Web Services saw net sales jump 27% year over year to $21 billion, roughly 16% of the company's total net sales for the quarter. And, management noted in the company's third-quarter earnings call that its advertising offerings saw a 30% jump in sales on a year-over-year basis. Of course, Amazon also remains the leading e-commerce business in the U.S. and one of the top globally by market share.
It's also helpful to look at Amazon's growth, not just year over year but on a compound basis. For example, Amazon's net sales in the most recent quarter represented a 32% increase from the same quarter in 2020, and an 81% increase from the same quarter in 2019, before the pandemic. Meanwhile, its net income in the third quarter of 2022 was up nearly 40% on a three-year basis.
The bottom line: Amazon remains a behemoth that is nowhere close to tapping out its growth potential. Could a recession and continued fluctuations in consumer spending continue to impact the company? Certainly, in the near term. However, over the long term, the strength of Amazon's foothold in some of the most lucrative industries in the world (online retail, cloud computing, advertising) gives it a core competitive advantage that few can match. This makes it a smart buy in any market environment, and a particularly compelling stock to consider at its current discounted price.
2. Fiverr: A gig-economy leader that keeps growing
Shares of Fiverr (FVRR 3.74%) have fallen by roughly 75% over the trailing 12 months, also victim to the negative sentiment the market has faced from spooked investors in recent quarters. However, the company's key role in the rapidly expanding gig economy has placed it on a strong growth trajectory that long-term investors can capitalize on.
In the most recent quarter, Fiverr grew its revenue by 11% year over year to $83 million, while increasing its active buyer count to 4.2 million, a 3% increase from the year-ago period. Buyers are also spending more on freelance services on Fiverr's platform, with spend per buyer jumping 12% year over year to $262. Fiverr continues to rapidly grow its cut of the transactions taking place on its platform, which is reported as its take rate. Its take rate now stands at 30% as of the most recent quarter, up 160 basis points year over year.
Fiverr's revenue in the third quarter of 2022 represented a 196% increase over the same quarter in 2019. Meanwhile, its active buyers and spend per buyer jumped 83% and 61%, respectively, over the three-year span. And where Fiverr reported a negative adjusted EBITDA of $4.4 million in the third quarter of 2019, that metric was positive at $6.6 million in the third quarter of 2022.
The gig economy generated approximately $401 billion in gross volume in 2022. In 2023, this figure is expected to jump to $455 billion. In the U.S. alone, it's estimated that nearly 87 million people will be doing freelance work by the year 2027, which would represent more than half of U.S. workers.
Fiverr's platform connects gig workers across a wide range of service sectors (web design, writing, translation, data entry, digital marketing, graphic design, and more) with clients that need their services all over the world. These clients can be small businesses or individuals, but Fiverr also partners with large enterprise clients like Fortune 500 companies.
The tech stock is in a great position to benefit from the gig economy's continued growth as it captures more and more of the total transactions taking place across this global landscape. Investors can profit from the stock's generous potential.
