The US market put up an amazing performance in 2023.
The bellwether S&P 500 Index gained 24% last year as concerns eased over rising inflation while the technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index surged 43.4% for its best year since 2020.
2024 saw this momentum continue as the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched the 38,000 mark for the first time while the S&P 500 Index has continued to make new records.
A raft of growth stocks has benefitted from these moves and saw their share prices hit either a 52-week high of all-time high.
We highlight four of these stocks and review their business performance to determine if they can continue to head higher this year.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META)
Meta Platforms is a social media company that owns the chat program WhatsApp, the social media site Facebook, and the video and picture-sharing app Instagram.
Meta’s share price recently touched a new all-time high of US$390.35 and has surged by 169% in the past year.
The social media giant handed in an impressive report card for the first nine months of 2023 (9M 2023) as CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared 2023 to be the company’s “Year of Efficiency”.
Revenue rose 12.3% year on year to US$94.8 billion while operating profit climbed 34.7% year on year to US$30.4 billion.
Net profit jumped 35.2% year on year to US$25.1 billion.
For 9M 2023, the social media giant also generated a positive free cash flow of US$32.1 billion, more than double of the US$13.6 billion generated a year ago.
Meta also saw daily average users continue to climb, inching up 5.1% year on year to 2.1 billion for the third quarter.
Monthly average users similarly crept up by 3.1% year on year to reach 3.05 billion.
Zuckerberg has a new goal of creating artificial general intelligence and will devote money and resources to building this up, along with its intention to slowly construct the metaverse, a digital world where people can interact virtually through avatars.
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA)
Nvidia is a designer and manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPUs) and has made impressive advances in artificial intelligence to help companies transition to accelerated computing.
Its share price has touched an all-time high of US$603 recently and has more than tripled in the past year as the company provides rosy forward guidance.
For the first nine months of fiscal 2024 (9M FY2024) ending 31 October 2023, revenue surged 85.5% year on year to US$38.8 billion.
Operating profit soared more than six-fold year on year to US$19.4 billion while net profit leapt more than eight-fold year on year to US$25.1 billion.
The GPU manufacturer also churned out copious levels of free cash flow at US$15.8 billion for 9M FY2024, up from just US$2.1 billion in the prior period.
CEO Jensen Huang believes the company is doing well because of the transition to accelerated computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can help to power growth for many more years.
Mastercard (NYSE: MA)
Mastercard is a payments technology company that aids transaction processing and acts as a middleman between vendors, banks, and consumers.
The payment company’s shares are trading close to its all-time high of US$440.94 and are up 15.5% in the past year.
Mastercard pulled off a strong performance for 9M 2023 as spending increased as people put the pandemic behind them.
Revenue rose 13% year on year to US$18.6 billion while operating profit increased by 17.1% year on year to US$10.6 billion.
Net profit improved by 13.5% year on year to US$8.4 billion.
The payments company generated a positive free cash flow of US$7 billion for 9M 2023 and saw a 7% year on year increase in card growth to 3.26 billion.
In light of the good results, Mastercard hiked its quarterly dividend by 16% year on year to US$0.66 and announced an US$11 billion share buyback program.
Visa (NYSE: V)
Visa, like Mastercard, is also a payments processing company that has seen an uplift in its business fortunes as consumers resume their spending.
The company’s share price touched an all-time high of US$272 and is up 21.2% for the past year.
For the fiscal year 2023 (FY2023) ending 30 September 2023, Visa reported an 11.4% year on year increase in revenue to US$32.7 billion.
Operating profit rose 11.6% year on year to US$21 billion with net profit increasing by 15.5% year on year to US$17.3 billion.
Visa generated free cash flow of US$19.7 billion for FY2023, 10% more than the US$17.9 billion a year ago.
Like Mastercard, Visa also increased its quarterly dividend from US$0.45 to US$0.52 in tandem with the good results.
If you’re wondering about how you can leverage AI in your investment portfolio, and how it can boost your portfolio, good news! We just released an urgent Special Free Report to cover everything you need to know about AI and its implications for investors. Find out which listed companies are actively using AI to power their businesses and what you should do to prepare for the AI boom. Click here to download your free report now.
Follow us on Facebook and Telegram for the latest investing news and analyses!
Disclosure: Royston Yang owns shares of Meta Platforms, Mastercard and Visa.
