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The unpredictable nature of oil and natural gas prices makes forecasting their movement challenging. However, aligning an investment strategy with your risk tolerance can help minimize potential losses. Going into the New Year, growth investing remains a popular approach for stock selection.
In this context, five energy companies worth monitoring in 2025 are Gulfport Energy GPOR, Excelerate Energy EE and Flotek Industries FTK. These stocks could offer promising opportunities for growth-focused investors.
Energy Sector's Struggles
While Wall Street celebrates a 28% surge in the S&P 500 this year, the Oil/Energy sector has faced a challenging journey, delivering just 4% total returns. With crude oil prices near $70 per barrel — 20% below April’s peak — the sector reflects global economic uncertainties, including a cooling Chinese economy. Meanwhile, natural gas prices, hovering around $3.50, remain volatile, sensitive to weather patterns and the supply-demand balance.
Why Growth Stocks Matter
Despite these headwinds, growth stocks in the energy sector offer compelling opportunities. Innovation and strategic investments in clean energy, LNG exports and advanced drilling technologies position these companies for long-term gains. Investors betting on growth stocks are not just riding the wave of oil and natural gas price recovery. They’re banking on forward-thinking strategies that align with global energy transitions.
Timing the Investment
Periods of underperformance often present appealing opportunities for growth-focused investors. With the economy gaining momentum and inflation easing, the energy sector holds the potential for a recovery in demand in 2025, driving value in well-positioned growth stocks.
Though oil faces challenges like oversupply and demand fluctuations, economic recovery in Asia offers optimism for gradual improvement. Similarly, natural gas prices are rising amid forecasts of colder weather by mid-January, boosting demand and potentially curbing production.
Current volatility could serve as a strategic entry point, offering long-term opportunities in the evolving energy landscape.
Here are the Stocks
Now, selecting the right growth stock among the existing choices can really be a challenging task. Finding the correct growth stock for your portfolio is made easy by our new style score system.
In particular, our Growth Style Score condenses all the essential metrics from a company’s financial statements to get a true sense of the quality and sustainability of its growth. Our research shows that stocks with a Growth Style Score of ‘A’ or ‘B’, when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy), offer the best investment opportunities in the growth investing space. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Gulfport Energy: Gulfport Energy is a natural gas-focused exploration and production company headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK. Operating primarily in the Utica Shale in Ohio and the SCOOP play in Oklahoma, Gulfport has emerged from bankruptcy with a stronger balance sheet and a free cash flow-oriented strategy. With more than 90% natural gas production, the company prioritizes Utica development to drive free cash flow, reduce debt and align with ESG-focused investor expectations.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Gulfport Energy’s 2024 earnings per share indicates 108.1% year-over-year growth. This Zacks Rank #1 firm has a Growth Score of B. Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for GPOR’s 2024 earnings has moved up around 2%.
Excelerate Energy: Based in The Woodlands, TX, the company specializes in LNG infrastructure and services, focusing on Floating Storage Regasification Units (FSRUs) and related terminals. With operations across emerging and developed markets, it represents 20% of the global FSRU fleet and 5% of global regasification capacity. Founded in 2003, the company aims to expand into LNG-to-power generation and gas distribution, delivering reliable and flexible energy solutions worldwide.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Excelerate Energy’s 2024 earnings per share indicates 10.8% year-over-year growth. This Zacks Rank #2 firm has a Growth Score of B. Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for EE’s 2024 earnings has moved up around 7.9%.
Flotek Industries: It is a leading chemistry and data technology company serving energy and industrial markets globally. Flotek leverages more than 170 patents and two decades of field and lab data to deliver innovative solutions. Operating through its Chemistry Technologies and Data Analytics segments, the company enhances operational efficiency and environmental performance for hydrocarbon producers, oil and gas companies and renewable energy sectors through optimized chemistry and near real-time data insights.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Flotek Industries’ 2024 earnings per share indicates 125% year-over-year growth. This Zacks Rank #2 firm has a Growth Score of A. Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for FTK’s 2024 earnings has moved up 7.4%.