When Warren Buffett makes a move, investors closely assess what it could say about the economy and whether or not everyone should follow his lead. But when he makes a lot of moves -- like selling eight stocks and buying four in the 2023 first quarter -- investors might learn more from the companies in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio that he's not touching.
For example, Berkshire bought all of its shares of Coca-Cola and American Express, two of its largest holdings, before 1995, and hasn't touched either since. Berkshire Hathaway owns more than 40 stocks, and it's the ones you don't hear about that might be the best stocks to buy.
Two such top stocks I recommend looking at now are Floor & Decor Holdings (FND -0.28%) and Nu Holdings (NU -1.37%). Let's see why.
A simple, no-brainer growth strategy
You don't need a portfolio of only cutting-edge tech stocks as a growth strategy. Diversification is an important part of successful investing, and there are other industries with excellent growth stocks. Floor & Decor has a deceptively simple model and robust long-term opportunities.
It operates a chain of warehouse-style retail stores that sell all kinds of hard-surface flooring and products in adjacent categories. It's a fairly young company, with 194 stores, but it sees the opportunity for 500 over the next eight or nine years.
Right now, those stores are extra important, because inflation is taking a toll on comparable-store sales (comps) growth. For all of 2022, sales increased 24% over the prio year, while comps increased 9%. But that began to slow down as the year went on, and in the 2023 first quarter, comps decreased 3%, although sales increased 9% over last year. Earnings per share (EPS) were flat.
Management is guiding for 2023 sales to increase 10%, comps to be flat or decline 3%, and EPS to be about flat. That's a big slowdown from growth over the past few years, but it's arguably positive as compared with how other retailers are weathering inflation.
Floor & Decor stock fell after the report, but that just means it's now a better deal for forward-thinking investors. At this price, it trades at 33 times trailing-12-month earnings, below its three-year average. It's not cheap, but investors are pricing in its growth potential.
FND PE ratio, data by YCharts. PE = price-to-earnings.
Give customers what they want, and they'll keep buying
That's really the premise of Nubank's business. It's a bank, not a retail setup, but new clients are opening up accounts at a rapid clip, and satisfied customers are adding services to their accounts. That has resulted in Nu's accounts growing to 79.1 million in the 2023 first quarter, or 33% year over year.
Even in Nu Holdings' home base of Brazil, where Nubank already has 46% of the population as customers, it's still adding plenty of new accounts. And in its new markets of Mexico and Colombia, it's exploding. These customers are highly engaged with an 82% activity rate. (That's the percentage of all customers who've produced revenue for the company in the past 30 days.)
Nu Holdings is growing fast, but its opportunity is still huge. It has 3% of the market in Mexico and 2% in Colombia. But the other way it grows is through cross-sells and upsells, which give it another long runway.
Nu offers affordable digital financial services, and customers who start with a bank account often add other services such as investing and insurance. Nu sees a $1 trillion opportunity among all of its services.
Even more, as it grows, efficiency and profitability improve. Nu has now posted three consecutive quarters of profits. As average revenue per active customer (ARPAC) grows through upsells, the cost to serve an account has remained constant.
Image source: Nu Holdings.
That's in Brazil, its longest-served market. The newer markets are following a similar process, and as they also grow ARPAC, overall profitability will get even better.
Nu stock is already up 65% this year as investors catch on to the possibilities here. It trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 9, which is getting expensive. But Nu has so much to offer, and investors can expect years of gains from its stock.
