You're not alone if you've found yourself frustrated with the ongoing turbulence afflicting the broader market. While there's no telling when the waters may settle down, if you're investing in wonderful businesses primed for growth over a period of many years you don't need a crystal ball.
Rather than trying to time the market, by continuing to invest through both its peaks and its valleys you can build a consistent pattern of investing that enables you to grow your returns through the years while keeping you ready to benefit from the market's best days. Today we're going to look at two wonderful businesses that have been discounted by the market over the last year, but remain on growth trajectories that could see shares soar when the market experiences a prolonged rebound.
Let's take a closer look.
1. Apple
Apple (AAPL -0.60%) has long dominated the smartphone industry, a space on track to be worth just shy of $500 billion by the year 2026, where it controls a roughly 23% market share. Over the years, Apple has shown its ability to enter and disrupt markets across a wide range of consumer technology products, from tablets to wearables to home accessories. The company's services segment, which includes everything from revenue derived from Apple Music to Apple Books, hasn't quite caught up to the growth trajectory of its smartphone segment, but this subscription-centric portion of its business is increasingly accounting for more and more of its overall sales and profits.
In the most recent quarter (which Apple reported as the first quarter of its fiscal 2023), total sales came to $117 billion, while its profits totaled $30 billion. Out of that sales total, $66 billion was derived from smartphone sales, while a whopping $21 billion came just from its services segment. Over the past three years alone, Apple has seen its top and bottom lines grow by respective amounts of 44% and 74%, while its cash from operations has grown by 51%. On that latter note, Apple generated operating cash flow of $34 billion in the most recent quarter alone.
Apple is still heavily dependent on smartphone sales, but less so than it was a few years ago. And the continued expansion of its range of products and services, as well as its leadership in the core product markets in which it operates, mean that the company is positioned to continue capturing the trajectory of consumer spending as that recovers over the long term. Even as advertising spending is down right now, this is a more emerging segment of Apple's business that management thinks could pose multi-billion-dollar potential for the company. This is just another example of the fact that Apple is a company that isn't content to rest on the growth of one business, but continues to aggressively pursue many catalysts to drive future sales and profits.
Shares have risen 15% since the start of 2023, compared to the S&P 500's rise of about 1% year to date. Still, the tech giant is trading at a price-to-sales ratio of only 6. Given the forward-looking potential of this household name business, and its incredible track record of growth in a wide range of markets -- one which it continues to build upon even in the current challenging consumer spending landscape -- the tech stock may be just too good to overlook.
2. Amazon
Amazon (AMZN 2.29%) distressed some investors with its 2022 earnings results, but it's important to bear in mind the context in which these financials were reported, as well as the current consumer and enterprise spending landscape. On the one hand, Amazon generated net sales of $514 billion in full-year 2022, representing an increase of 9% from 2021, while its Amazon Web Services segment alone brought in revenue of $80 billion, a 30% jump from the prior year.
While operating income was down, this still came in at $12 billion for the 12-month period, while the company finished out the year with cash and investments on its balance sheet to the tune of about $70 billion. The real sore spot for many investors was the net loss Amazon recorded for 2022, its first in over a decade. Here's the thing, though -- this wasn't an operational loss, or related to any other issues stemming from Amazon's core collection of businesses.
Instead, that $2.7 billion net loss that Amazon reported in 2022 was almost entirely related to a decline in its common stock holdings in Rivian. While its long-standing deal with the electric vehicle maker is poised to revolutionize the delivery portion of its supply chain processes over the next decade -- the company plans to have 100,000 of the company's electric vehicles on the road delivering its products by the year 2030 -- Rivian has been totally battered by the market over the last year, to the tune of 65%.
The market has also discounted shares of Amazon over the last year -- by 30% over the trailing 12 months -- though the stock is up by about 12% since the start of the year. The company currently trades at a quite palatable price-to-sales valuation of 2. As always, share price alone shouldn't make you buy or sell a stock. But looking at the continued promising growth story of this business, its ongoing market leadership in the e-commerce and cloud infrastructure industries (not to mention its growing footprints in markets like entertainment and healthcare), and strong financial foundation, the current discounted environment may create a compelling buying proposition for risk-resilient long-term investors. Holding onto Amazon through the next bull market and beyond could be a very smart move.
