After a bull run that lasted from mid-2020 to the end of 2021, stocks across the board experienced a humbling 2022, with many dropping by double-digit percentage points. Although nobody likes seeing their portfolio's value drop, bear markets can be a chance to grab some great stocks trading at a discount.
If you're a long-term investor, instead of focusing on the negative, use this time to your advantage. Here are two stocks currently trading at attractive levels worth investigating.
Alibaba Group
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group (BABA 0.64%) was a huge beneficiary of the mid-2020 bull run, with its stock increasing over 70% from March to October 2020. Its stock price has since dropped by over 73%, bringing it to prices not seen since August 2015. In the past 12 months, the stock has declined nearly 22%.
A large portion of Alibaba's recent struggles can be attributed to China's zero-COVID policy, which all but shut down the country and put a halt to its economic activity. Given Alibaba's size and how much of China's economic activity it accounts for (well over 40% of all e-commerce), it was bound to have a direct negative effect on the company.
Now that China has begun rolling back its zero-COVID policies, brighter days could be ahead. Since early November, when China began easing restrictions, the MSCI China index -- which contains over 700 large-cap and mid-cap stocks and covers around 85% of equity on Chinese stock exchanges -- has vastly outperformed the S&P 500.
Data by YCharts.
E-commerce aside, Alibaba's growth should depend a lot on the growth of its cloud services. With just a 5% market share globally in the cloud infrastructure and service industry, Alibaba Cloud lags considerably behind industry leaders like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. It's headed in the right direction, though.
For the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2022, Alibaba Cloud revenue grew 2% year over year to over $3.87 billion. The company says Alibaba Cloud has reached market saturation with China's big internet companies, so it's tapping into "sunrise" industries (relatively new and growing industries) for growth. It seems to be paying off, with its non-internet customers growing 9% year over year and accounting for 53% of cloud revenue.
There's still a lot of work to be done with Alibaba Cloud, but a recent $1 billion commitment to its global partner system shows the company is taking actionable steps to address. The $1 billion will be spent over the next three fiscal years and will focus on helping Alibaba customers upgrade their technological infrastructure. It'll be doing so via funding, rebates, and go-to-market initiatives that should help spark growth.
Alibaba still has a lot of ground to make up before reaching previous levels, but long-term investors with time on their side should feel comfortable with the company's resources and importance to the Chinese economy.
3M
Things haven't been going the best at 3M (MMM -0.66%) lately. Revenue for its fourth quarter of 2022 was down 6% year over year, which ended a less-than-stellar year and caused a similarly lackluster short-term outlook. The company says it expects revenue to drop a further 2% to 6% in 2023, citing broader economic conditions.
The diversified technology service provider's struggles haven't been lost on investors, with the stock down 22% in the past 12 months and is at its lowest in the past decade. This is partly why now may be the time to begin looking into investing in the stock. Its price-to-earnings ratio -- which tells you how much you're paying for every dollar of a company's earnings -- is hovering around 10, down 65% from five years ago.
Data by YCharts.
As a diversified conglomerate operating in industrials, healthcare, safety, and more, 3M's business can seemingly be spread too thin sometimes, leading to a lack of direction. However, the company has recently begun trimming its business and focusing on its core offerings. The company recently divested from food safety and is planning to spin off its healthcare business, which has been a weak spot for the company.
Spinning off its healthcare business should allow the company to refocus on its core industrial business, which accounts for over 35% of its revenue. It also allows 3M investors to have a stake in the spun-off healthcare company that will surely benefit from having a dedicated management and board to run it more efficiently. This should be a good long-term play for the company.
3M is a Dividend King, meaning it has increased its yearly dividend for at least 50 consecutive years. The company recently announced a new quarterly dividend of $1.50 per share, and with a trailing-12-month dividend yield of over 5.5%, it's a lucrative incentive to hold the stock through the turbulent times it's likely to face in the near future.
Things could (and probably will) get worse before they get better with 3M, but long-term investors should feel confident it has the resources needed to eventually weather this current storm, even if it takes replacing the current management, which seems to have problems hitting guidance.
