As the calendar flips to the fourth quarter, investors still need to focus on 2023. The market is ripe with opportunity, and there are a few stocks that I'm planning on purchasing in October.
Amazon (AMZN 3.43%), CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD 2.03%), and MercadoLibre (MELI 3.09%) are at the top of my shopping list for this month. While Amazon is more of a turnaround story, CrowdStrike and MercadoLibre are excellent growth stocks that can be purchased for a fair price.
Keep reading to understand why these three are excellent buys.
Amazon
Amazon is the world's e-commerce leader, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) believes it has too much power and recently filed a lawsuit alongside 17 states charging it with anti-competitive practices. The suit alleges that it illegally stifles competitors by using unfair practices, overcharges sellers, and other alleged misdeeds.
While I won't speculate on the suit's merit, investors shouldn't be worried. If a company is broken up, it's fairly common to see value unlocked. It also allows investors to invest in portions of the company directly.
Instead of purchasing Amazon as a whole, which includes slowly growing segments like online and physical stores (up 4% and 6%, respectively, in the second quarter), I could likely get a piece of the advertising business and AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Advertising grew at a brisk 22% in the second quarter to $10.7 billion, surpassing subscription services as the company's fourth-largest segment. While AWS, the cloud computing wing, didn't have a great quarter (up 12% to $22.1 billion), the market opportunity is immense. AWS should start seeing growth as the economy speeds up.
With the stock down 4% on the news, it's not a massive price dip. But, with Amazon trading for an attractive 2.4 times sales, it's at the top of my shopping list in October.
CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike is a rapidly growing cybersecurity company whose cloud-first protection software leans heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) to constantly evolve the model to best protect its clients. With annual recurring revenue (ARR) rising 37% to $2.93 billion in the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal year (ended July 31), it's displaying strong growth potential in a crowded field.
That ARR figure is just scratching the surface. Right now, CrowdStrike believes it operates in a $76 billion market, and with various product launches plus market expansion, it thinks its total addressable market will grow to $158 billion by 2026. That's a massive opportunity, but customers must use multiple modules to maximize its potential.
Fortunately, CrowdStrike already mastered the art of upselling its products. In its third quarter, the average customer spent $125 for every $100 it spent last year. And 63% of its customers use five or more of CrowdStrike's services, while 24% use at least seven.
To cap off the investment thesis, the company had 26% free-cash-flow margins in its second quarter and is just starting to post net income under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). All of this potential and current success can be purchased for 15 times sales, which is far less than some of its unprofitable software peers, even as CrowdStrike is growing faster.
MercadoLibre
MercadoLibre is often called the Amazon of Latin America (although it isn't facing a regulator's lawsuit), and it has an even larger footprint than Amazon with its digital payment and consumer lending products. MercadoLibre's consistent growth has been remarkable, and the second quarter was no exception.
Even as American e-commerce companies face stagnant growth, MercadoLibre's gross merchandise volume rose 47% year over year, and its number of unique buyers rose from 40.8 million to 47.6 million. This helped power its commerce segment 38% higher, or 65% when adjusted for currency exchange rates.
Fintech services drove MercadoLibre higher last year, but they're not doing as well this year, although their growth is nothing to be disappointed with. Total payment volume rose from $30.2 billion to $42.1 billion, while the number of transactions rose 69%.
And it saw fewer losses in its credit division after management purposely slowed its growth last year due to high default rates. Still, that didn't stop its fintech division from growing 24% year over year, or 48% when currency-exchange effects are excluded.
Now that MercadoLibre has captured a significant share of its market and continues to grow, it can focus on becoming profitable again. The operating margin rose from 9.6% to 16.3% in a year, which helped increase its net income margin from 4.7% to 7.7%.
Despite this success, the stock trades at levels not seen over the past decade.
MELI PS ratio data by YCharts. PS = price-to-sales ratio.
As a result, I think there are few better stocks to buy in October than MercadoLibre.
