When it comes to winning investments, the largest companies typically get all the headlines. While these large, well-known companies may still generate outsized returns for shareholders, identifying these businesses before they're household names can often mean even better results.
Here are two stocks with the potential to be future all-stars that everyone will eventually be talking about.
Dutch Bros
Dutch Bros (BROS -1.04%) might be the fastest-growing coffee chain you've never heard of, but that may chance soon. And if you have heard of Dutch Bros, it's likely because you live in one of the 14 states in which the company operates. At the end of 2022, Dutch Bros had 671 total locations, but it's guiding for an additional 150 openings by the end of this year. It's clear there's plenty of room for Dutch Bros to continue to increase its store count.
The growth story for Dutch Bros is what you would expect for a company adding to its store count by double digits each quarter. In Q2 2023, revenue was up 34% year over year. This is a typical result for the company, which has seen revenue growth of 30% or more in every quarter of its short life as a public company. What's impressive about the Q2 growth is that it didn't just come from opening new stores -- same-store sales growth for the quarter was 3.8%.
Dutch Bros has historically been unprofitable, but it's turning the corner. In Q2 2022, Dutch Bros posted a net loss of $0.9 million -- that number improved a year later to net income of $2.8 million. Many fast-growing companies tout a "path to profitability" but in the case of Dutch Bros, it's easy to see. The company's second-quarter operating margin reached 7.8% of total revenue, up from just 1.4% in the year-ago period. If Dutch Bros can continue to generate strong revenue growth while expanding its operating margin, investors can look forward to sustained profitability in the near future.
Celsius Holdings
Sticking with the theme of fast-growing beverage companies, Celsius Holdings (CELH 2.12%) has had an even more impressive run than Dutch Bros. Over the past five years, the energy drink producer has posted a return of more than 4,000%. Even with this impressive run, Celsius still faces a large market opportunity, and its $13 billion market cap remains overshadowed by Monster Beverage at $59 billion.
Celsius's portfolio of energy drinks has clearly caught on with consumers. High-double-digit or even triple-digit revenue growth has become the norm over the last few years. In fact, since Q1 2021, the slowest quarterly growth Celsius has reported was still a blistering 71%. .
The last several quarters have also seen economies of scale kick in, resulting in improving profitability metrics. In Q2 2023, gross margin was 48.8%, a vast improvement from the prior-year period's 38.5%. Net income in that period also surged from $9 million to $52 million.
There's reason to believe these trends will continue as Celsius takes advantage of its distribution agreement with PepsiCo, which was signed in Aug. 2022. This partnership consolidated Celsius's distribution network and helped it gain exposure in more locations. The impact of the agreement has been felt already with 57% of Celsius's total Q2 revenue coming from the Pepsi distribution network. Management pointed to the Pepsi agreement as a driver of sales, especially in North America.
One note of caution for investors is Celsius's valuation. The stock trades at 14 times sales, a premium one would expect to see for a company expanding this quickly. But with so much of the company's growth story already baked into the share price, it could make market-beating returns more difficult to achieve from here.
