November isn't just a good time to begin your holiday shopping. It's also a great time to buy stocks with tremendous growth prospects. Of course, any time is a great time to buy stocks if you're a long-term investor.
We asked several Motley Fool contributors who are long-term investors to pick a top stock to buy in November. Here's why they selected Cresco Labs (CRLBF -0.50%), Fastly (FSLY -0.93%), LGI Homes (LGIH -1.40%), Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings III (IPOC), and NVIDIA (NVDA 0.57%).
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A cannabis company set to soar
Keith Speights (Cresco Labs): With Nov. 3 rapidly approaching, I've done what many investors have almost certainly done as well: Try to figure out which stocks could pop based on the election outcomes. My view is that Cresco Labs just might be the biggest winner from Election Day this year.
Cresco ranks as one of the largest multistate cannabis operators in the U.S. The company operates in nine states that represent 60% of the addressable U.S. cannabis market. It owns 19 retail cannabis stores. Perhaps more importantly, Cresco's products are sold in more than 780 dispensaries. This gives the company a much wider reach than its own stores provide.
I think that Cresco will be a clear winner on Nov. 3 if Arizona and New Jersey legalize recreational marijuana as expected. The company already runs a medical cannabis dispensary in Arizona and has a large cannabis distribution operation in neighboring California. Although Cresco doesn't have a retail presence in New Jersey's medical cannabis market yet, it does have several stores in New York state, and it would likely quickly expand into the Garden State if recreational pot is legalized.
The big prize, though, could come if the Democrats capture the White House and both chambers of the U.S. Congress. That could set the stage for financial reforms that make it easier for Cresco to obtain banking services. It could also pave the way for medical cannabis legalization at the federal level, as well as changes to federal laws that would recognize the rights of states to enforce their own recreational marijuana laws. November has the potential to be a huge month for this fast-growing marijuana stock.
This stock will give your portfolio a long-term "edge"
Sean Williams (Fastly): Over the past couple of weeks, cloud edge platform services provider Fastly has been clobbered. This after the high-growth company that helps businesses rapidly and securely deliver content to end users revised its third-quarter revenue guidance from a previous range of $73.5 million to $75.5 million to $70 million to $71 million. Fastly blamed the revision on weakness from its top customer, TikTok, which has been threatened with a ban in the U.S. by President Trump.
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While it's unfortunate that TikTok, which represented 12% of Fastly's sales in the first half of the year, hit a speed bump, investors selling now are completely overlooking far too many long-term positives.
One thing to note about Fastly is that the company's customer count increased by 114 to 1,951 in the second quarter from the sequential first quarter. This was the fastest sequential quarterly customer increase since Fastly's initial public offering.
Fastly's average enterprise customer also spent an average of $716,000 in Q2 2020, up from $642,000 in Q1 2020, with a dollar-based net retention rate of 137%, up 4 percentage points from the sequential quarter. In other words, take TikTok out of the equation, and we see that Fastly is picking up a boatload of new clients, seeing those existing clients spend more money, and enjoying a nice uptick in gross margin as its existing enterprise clients see higher usage.
Furthermore, edge cloud computing is perhaps the fastest-growing segment within the cloud space. As online/cloud usage soars during and after the pandemic, Grand View Research has estimated that compound growth for the edge cloud market will hit 37% annually through 2024.
Fastly isn't a cheap stock by any means, but long-term investors have been given a gift with this recent pullback. I suggest you take it.
Housing remains resilient, and this homebuilder is targeting the right customer
Tyler Crowe (LGI Homes): One of the true surprises of the pandemic has been the strength of the housing market. Typically, things like rising unemployment would lead to waning residential construction. That hasn't been the case, though. Absent a shutdown related blip in April, housing starts this year have been the highest in over a decade.
While rock-bottom mortgage rates and people on the fence about buying a home getting that extra incentive to buy in a pandemic, the largest contributing factor to the booming housing market is the Millennial generation. As more and more of this age cohort reaches prime home-buying age, first-time buyers are coming out of the woodwork.
This is what makes LGI Homes so compelling as an investment. This homebuilder is focused solely on building homes for first-time buyers and renters.
With a hypertargeted marketing program and a focus on spec-built homes to keep down costs, LGI has been able to keep its average selling price around $240,000. That has led to blockbuster sales lately, as sales in 2020 are up 21% year over year. Sales growth like that isn't an aberration, though; the company has grown sales at a compounded annual growth rate of 47% since 2013.
With 117 communities with homes still for sale and three to five years of lots in its build backlog, there is plenty of room for LGI to build on its decade-long track record of success. It's a stock worth a hard look in November.
A healthy pick for your portfolio
Dan Caplinger (Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings III): More companies than ever are forgoing the usual IPO process, instead using special purpose acquisition companies to make their shares available to ordinary investors. SPACs are shell companies set up specifically to find and acquire privately held companies that want to come public, and Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings III (SCHH III) is the third SPAC from tech entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya. Palihapitiya's goal with his slate of Social Capital Hedosophia SPACs is to provide disruptive tech companies with the opportunity to raise capital to enhance their future growth, while giving average investors the chance to take stakes that have recently been available only to venture capital and private equity investors.
SCHH III recently announced it would merge with privately held Clover Health. Clover's mission is to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all, and it's started by creating a Medicare Advantage insurance program that's far less costly than both original Medicare and its competitors' Medicare Advantage offerings.
Yet Medicare Advantage is just the beginning for Clover. CEO/co-founder Vivek Garipalli has a lot of experience in the healthcare field, and the company's Clover Assistant software platform shares information to ensure that medical professionals can make consistent, data-driven treatment decisions. The platform also speeds up reimbursement while providing incentives for providers that use it.
Most investors didn't respond favorably to SCHH III's choice of Clover, having hoped instead for something more clearly tech-focused. Yet Clover has the potential to disrupt the entire health-care system and its multitrillion-dollar addressable market. That's a huge opportunity for SPAC investors as the deal moves forward, and that makes SCHH III attractive at current prices.
You can bet on this chip company for years to come
Chris Neiger (NVIDIA): Investors who are looking for a great technology stock that they can buy and hold for years should give NVIDIA a serious look. The company sells graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used for everything from gaming to data processing, and it's the runaway leader in the graphics market with 80% market share in discrete GPUs.
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For years, NVIDIA's growth story was all about gaming GPUs, but the company has been expanding its data center sales over the past few years. In the second quarter, NVIDIA's data center sales outpaced its gaming revenue for the first time. This showed that NVIDIA can diversify its GPU revenue as the company continues to grow. Investors should note that gaming still grew at a healthy clip, up 26% year over year, while data center revenue skyrocketed 167%. The strong quarter from both of these segments helped boost NVIDIA's total sales 50% in the quarter and pushed non-GAAP diluted earnings up 76% to $2.18.
If gaming and data centers represented NVIDIA's entire story, the company would still warrant investor attention. But NVIDIA's management has put the company in an even better position for long-term growth with its recent deal to acquire Arm Holdings. NVIDIA agreed to buy the chip design and licensing company for $40 billion, and the deal is expected to close within the next 18 months. Once it does, NVIDIA will have a foothold in the mobile industry, since Arm's chip designs are found in 90% of smartphones.
NVIDIA's dominance in discrete GPUs, its expanding data center sales, and the company's purchase of Arm Holdings mean that the company is well-positioned to continue growing for years to come and would likely make a fantastic long-term investment.
