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23 Most Profitable Stocks of the Last 12 Months
Usman Kabir
23 min read

In This Article:

In this article, we discuss the 23 most profitable stocks of the last 12 months. If you want to skip our detailed analysis of these stocks, go directly to 5 Most Profitable Stocks of the Last 12 Months. 

The United States stock market has come a long way since the turn of the millennium more than two decades ago. Emerging from the dotcom boom and bust without permanent damage, the economy has faced the financial meltdown of 2008, a tech-enabled boom that has resulted in trillion dollar valuations, and the pandemic crisis of 2020 that ground business to almost a complete halt across the globe. From 2003 to 2023, the benchmark S&P 500 has registered double digits annual returns thirteen times.

Investors at the stock market have made money from this growth by piling into profitable stocks like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). However, even as these tech stocks become the hottest equities, old-school value investing has yet to lose charm. Value investors who like to invest in profitable companies with high gross margins and net income have made shrewd investments in businesses with a solid track record over these twenty years. For example instead of NVDA, we identified the cheapest AI stock that is trading at less than 5 times market value excluding cash and investments using the value investing approach.

The present condition of the stock market is better understood in the context of a recent research report by investment advisory Deutsche Bank. The report underlines that the seven biggest companies in the S&P 500 now have a combined market capitalization that make these firms the second biggest stock market in the world, almost double the size of the Japanese market that is in fourth position. Jim Reid, the head of global economics and thematic research at the advisory, has warned that this makes the US market most concentrated in history. 

The fortunes of these firms are set to rise even further as AI hype and rate cut expectations serve to increase interest in growth stocks. Businesses are investing heavily in AI tools to keep pace with industry demand in this regard. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), recently highlighted the role that he expected AI to play in changing work trends in the coming years and months. He made these comments during the second quarter earnings call at the end of January. 

“A growing body of evidence makes clear the role AI will play in transforming work. Our own research, as well as external studies, show as much as 70% improvement in productivity, using generative AI for specific work tasks, and overall early Copilot for Microsoft 365 users were 29% faster in the series of tasks, like searching, writing, and summarizing. Two months in, we have seen faster adoption than either our E3 or E5 suites as enterprises, like Dentsu, Honda, Pfizer, all deploy Copilot to their employees, and we are expanding availability to organizations of all sizes. We're also seeing a Copilot ecosystem begin to emerge ISVs like Atlassian, Mural, and Trello, as well as customers like Air India, Bayer, and Siemens have all built plug-ins for specific lines of business that extend Copilot's capabilities.”

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