Building wealth in the stock market is not difficult. The biggest challenge is staying focused on the long-term potential of a business when market volatility strikes, as it inevitably will. As long as you invest in competitively positioned companies that have lots of room to expand over the long term, you're going to be successful.
As the markets hit new highs at the midway point of 2025, three Motley Fool contributors believe Shopify (SHOP 2.02%), MercadoLibre (MELI -1.26%), and Roku (ROKU -0.10%) can make solid additions to a long-term investor's portfolio. Here's why these stocks are poised to deliver outstanding returns.
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An excellent stock to invest in e-commerce growth
John Ballard (Shopify): Shopify has been an amazing performer for investors. The shares have rocketed from a split-adjusted share price of about $3 following its initial public offering in 2015 to around $120 today. But what makes Shopify a brilliant growth stock is that it is still growing revenue at over 20% annually, with potential to keep growing at high rates for a long time.
The company's main driver of growth is not subscriptions to its platform, but merchant solutions, such as payment processing, shipping solutions, and capital lending. Shopify has reported 20% or more quarterly revenue growth for the last two years, with merchant solutions now comprising 74% of the business.
Merchant solutions are a high-margin revenue stream for Shopify. Because of this, Shopify continues to invest in driving this side of the business. Over the last year, it doubled the number of markets for Shopify Payments. It is also launching free tools, such as TariffGuide.ai, which uses artificial intelligence to help merchants figure out how to reduce costs in their supply chain based on product details. Shopify's innovation is an advantage in building the go-to operating system for e-commerce.
Of course, merchant solutions only grow if businesses using Shopify's platform are selling more and generating payment fees. This incentivizes Shopify to help merchants succeed. This forms a sort of partnership between the company and its merchant customers, which ultimately benefits the company and shareholders.
E-commerce is a multitrillion-dollar market, yet the total value of transactions completed by a Shopify merchant in the last quarter was less than $75 billion, or $350 billion on an annual run-rate basis. The recent expansion of Shopify Payments to 16 new markets should help it further penetrate this opportunity to drive more growth. All signs point to Shopify growing substantially in the years to come.
Great performance, tons of opportunity
Jennifer Saibil (MercadoLibre): MercadoLibre is an e-commerce powerhouse serving Latin America, and it's demonstrating fantastic growth. Its population is underpenetrated in e-commerce, giving it a long growth runway. It also has a growing presence in financial services, and its wide-ranging businesses in areas that are still adopting technology mean it has years of growth ahead.
In the 2025 first quarter, revenue increased 64% (currency neutral) year over year. Gross merchandise volume (GMV) was up 40%, and total payment volume increased 72%. It's also highly profitable. Operating income increased 45% over last year with a 12.9% margin.
Although e-commerce is growing rapidly, physical stores still account for 85% of sales in the company's regions. As the leader in e-commerce, MercadoLibre has 5% of the total retail market, and it's helping to generate the shift over to digital shopping by improving its value proposition with speedy deliveries, an increased assortment, and more. It's working, and unique active buyers continue to increase, up 25% year over year to 67 million in the first quarter. Like Amazon, it's also monetizing its platform with a lucrative and growing advertising business.
The fintech business is younger and growing even faster. Monthly active users increased 31% year over year in the first quarter to 64 million, and the credit portfolio increased 74%. The large incumbent banks in Latin America still account for the vast majority of banking in the region, but MercadoLibre is capturing market share through offering easy-to-use digital services and high yields on accounts. It's also expanding its platform with new products and features, and it's planning to open a fully digital bank in Mexico and Argentina.
MercadoLibre stock is up 41% year to date, crushing the market. It's been especially attractive to investors this year since it has low exposure to tariffs, but it tends to beat the market at any time. With its well-run business and wide opportunities, it should continue to create shareholder value for the foreseeable future.
This streaming stock could be ready for a breakout
Jeremy Bowman (Roku): There's no doubt that Roku has struggled in recent years. The leading streaming distribution platform is still operating at a loss, even though streaming now has a larger share of viewing in the U.S. than broadcast and cable combined.
The stock has been a laggard as well since a pandemic surge led to a collapse, but it could finally be ready to turn the corner. First, Roku said it expected to report an operating profit on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis in 2026, and the company's recent results continue to show it making progress toward that end. In the first quarter of 2025, the company reported revenue growth of 16% to $1.02 billion, and its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) improved 37% to $56 million.
Last month, Roku announced a new partnership with Amazon, integrating Roku's authenticated CTV footprint with Amazon's DSP (demand-side platform). The partnership gives Roku a new way to leverage its ad inventory and technology and neutralizes one of its closest competitors in streaming distribution.
Additionally, the recent earnings report from Netflix showed that there's still robust growth in the streaming sector if Roku can take advantage of it. Meanwhile, Alphabet also showed off solid growth in its earnings report with advertising growth at 10%.
Analysts are expecting 11% growth from Roku in the second quarter to $1.07 billion when it reports earnings in August. If the company can top that and take steps toward profitability, there's a lot of upside potential for the stock.
