Growth stocks should occupy an important place in any investor’s portfolio.
These businesses have the potential to continue growing over years or even decades, allowing your portfolio to climb steadily to allow you to enjoy a happy retirement.
A great place to start looking for suitable growth stocks are the US stock markets – the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
We profile four promising growth stocks from these two stock markets that could power your portfolio to greater heights.
Oracle (NYSE: ORCL)
Oracle is a software company that offers integrated application suites while also providing a cloud service and infrastructure to clients.
The company saw total revenue rise 7% year on year to US$25.4 billion for the first six months of fiscal 2024 (1H FY2024) ending 30 November 2023.
In particular, Oracle’s cloud services and licence support division saw revenue improve by 13% year on year to US$19.2 billion.
With operating expenses increasing by just 2% year on year, operating profit jumped 22% year on year to US$6.9 billion.
Net profit surged by 50% year on year to US$4.9 billion.
Oracle also saw its free cash flow soar by nearly 53% year on year to US$4.7 billion for 1H FY2024.
CEO Safra Catz commented that demand for the company’s cloud infrastructure and generative artificial intelligence (AI) services is increasing at a very fast pace.
Oracle’s total remaining performance obligations (RPO) climbed to US$65 billion, exceeding the cloud company’s annual revenue.
Last year, Oracle announced that it extended its partnership with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to deliver database services on the latter’s Microsoft Azure data centres.
Monster Beverage (NASDAQ: MNST)
Monster Beverage is a manufacturer and distributor of energy drinks under famous brands such as Monster, Predator, Nitro, Reign and Full Throttle.
For the first nine months of 2023 (9M 2023), Monster reported a 12% year on year increase in revenue to US$5.4 billion.
Operating profit jumped 27.6% year on year to US$1.5 billion while net profit surged by 42% year on year to US$1.3 billion.
The company also saw its free cash flow more than double year on year to US$1.2 billion for 9M 2023.
Chairman and co-CEO Rodney Sacks was pleased with the company’s product innovation launches in 2023 with the roll-out of the business’s first flavoured malt beverage alcohol product “The Beast Unleashed”.
Monster’s new hard tea will initially be launched in four flavours in both variety packs and single-serve cans early this year.
The board also authorised a new S$500 million share repurchase program.
Fastly (NYSE: FSLY)
Fastly operates an edge computing platform to help its clients improve site performance while enhancing security.
The company runs a suite of edge computing, delivery, and security offerings to enable organisations to enjoy rapid time-to-market and cost savings.
Fastly reported a respectable set of earnings for 9M 2023 with revenue rising 17.5% year on year to US$368.2 million.
Gross profit leapt 29.5% year on year to US$190.6 million and the business generated positive operating cash flow for the period, reversing the negative operating cash flow in the prior year.
Total customer count inched up 2% year on year to 3,102 but enterprise customer count increased by 7% year on year to 547 for the third quarter of 2023.
The average enterprise customer spend also improved by 11.3% year on year to US$858,000.
Fastly significantly enhanced its edge cloud platform with the acquisition of Domainr last year which helped to improve platform simplification and security.
Workday (NASDAQ: WDAY)
Workday is a provider of enterprise cloud solutions for finance and human resources and is used by more than 10,000 organisations around the world.
The company announced an encouraging set of financial numbers for the first nine months of fiscal 2024 (9M FY2024).
Revenue increased by 16.8% year on year to US$5.3 billion and Workday generated an operating profit of US$104.3 million, a reversal from the operating loss of US$133.2 million in the prior year.
Net profit came in at US$192.5 million, an improvement from the net loss of US$241.1 million a year ago.
For 9M FY2024, free cash flow surged by 43.7% year on year to US$972.3 million.
Workday reported a 12-month subscription revenue backlog of US$6.05 billion, up 22% year on year.
It also boasts 65 million global users with more than 95% customer satisfaction.
The company believes it has a total addressable market of US$142 billion, split into US$58 billion for human capital management and US$84 billion for finance, giving it a long runway for future growth.
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Disclosure: Royston Yang does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned.
