It's not surprising that the Nasdaq Composite's return of 275% outpaces the S&P 500 return of 178% over the last 10 years. The Nasdaq is full of tech-centric companies that are driving change and innovation in the economy, which is where you'll find stocks with monster growth potential.
While the stock market got off to a shaky start this year, there are good opportunities to buy shares of dominant tech firms at attractive valuations. Here are two stocks that can deliver great returns in the coming years.
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1. Alphabet
Shares of Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) have surged in recent weeks. The company formerly known as Google and home of the famed search engine (among other products) has been weighed down amid increasing competition, fears a recession could slow the advertising market, and the possibility of a court-ordered breakup. But these concerns are well reflected in the stock's modest valuation.
Alphabet delivered double-digit growth in revenue and earnings over the last decade. The stock doubled over the last five years and still trades at a modest forward price-to-earnings multiple of 18. That is a bargain for a business with billions of users across popular services like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Search.
One of the chief concerns for investors right now is Google's competitive position in search, which generates 56% of the company's revenue. OpenAI's ChatGPT and other leading artificial intelligence (AI) models can function like search engines with a brain, and that is a threat to Google's long-dominant position in the search market.
However, Google has very capable AI technology. It built world-class AI infrastructure with a large footprint of data centers, including investment in its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) for AI workloads. The company also turned heads last fall when it unveiled its Willow chip for quantum computing.
The latest version of its Gemini large language model is the top-ranked model on Chatbot Arena's leaderboard at the time of writing. Gemini powers all seven of the company's products with over 2 billion users. These achievements reflect a massive war chest of resources at the company's disposal. Over the last year, Alphabet generated $75 billion in free cash flow on $360 billion of annual revenue, and analysts expect its earnings per share to grow 15% on an annualized basis over the long term.
Alphabet's investments in data centers, Gemini, and cloud services are laying the foundation for tremendous growth over the long term. These assets will lead to better services for consumers while also positioning Google to capture a large share of a $1 trillion AI opportunity. These prospects make the stock a compelling buy on the dip.
2. Amazon
Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN) stock had a great run over the past few years. Since bottoming out in 2022, the stock soared to new highs, rising 144% and outperforming the Nasdaq's return of 83%. Amazon continues to show solid growth in revenue, while cost reduction efforts in its retail business and growth in cloud computing are helping the business convert more revenue into cool profits.
Amazon is in a league of its own when it comes to e-commerce -- its largest business. Revenue from online stores grew 6% year over year in the first quarter to $57 billion, as management saw sales of everyday essentials grow twice as fast as the rest of the business. A healthy number of Prime members are clearly relying on Amazon more, which is strengthening its competitive moat.
One of the best reasons to consider buying the stock is Amazon's opportunity in cloud computing. Amazon is making cloud services more cost-effective for businesses with its range of hardware and software solutions. Amazon Web Services currently sits at the top of the $348 billion cloud computing market. Over the last year, it generated $112 billion in revenue, with quarterly revenue up 17% year over year in the first quarter.
Amazon's cloud opportunity is massive. It is seeing triple-digit growth for AI services, where it offers tools to help companies build their own AI-based applications. Growing demand for cloud services will significantly grow the value of Amazon's business over the long term, as Amazon Web Services generates most of the company's operating profit.
Management believes AWS could generate hundreds of billions in revenue over the long term. Recent demand trends certainly point to AWS becoming a bigger piece of Amazon's business, which is a catalyst for the stock.
The stock trades at 33 times trailing earnings. For a business that could see many more years of double-digit earnings growth, Amazon investors could be looking at more market-beating returns.
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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. John Ballard has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
