The market’s been moving higher this year, but hold off on the party favors. You may be surprised by how many stocks are truly off to the races. Less than three dozen companies with market caps of at least $2 billion are up at least 50% in 2024. Can they keep the good times rolling?
Celsius Holdings (CELH), Sweetgreen (SG), and Instacart (CART) are among the 35 companies with market valuations north of $2 billion that are up at least 50% this year. They are positioned well to more than double this year. Let’s go over why they might get there.
1. Celsius: Up 64%
Shares of Celsius are sparkling this year, and that’s fitting since it’s a fast-growing player in sparkling functional beverages. This year’s initial jump isn’t a fluke. The stock has more than tripled over the past year. Celsius is a five-bagger over the past three years and a jaw-dropping 63-bagger over the past five years.
Growth will inevitably slow for its product line of juice-flavored beverages that help burn fat and calories. But for now, Celsius continues to defy gravity. Bears figured the growth would end last year. They were wrong. They thought the same thing the year before. They were really wrong. This is probably a good time to point out that short interest hit at an all-time high this month.
Revenue has more than doubled for three consecutive years. The company is also profitable, with double-digit percentage beats in every single quarter of 2023.
Stateside growth will slow, but it’s time for international growth to take over. Celsius announced three new international expansion markets earlier this year, something worth watching since international sales currently account for just 4% of its top-line results.
Let’s close with a data point that may blow you away. Set aside the energy drink maker’s tendency to blow through profit targets: The beverage stock is a 62-bagger over the past five years, and it’s trading for 57 times next year’s earnings. You could’ve bought all of Celsius five years ago for less than what it should earn next year.
2. Sweetgreen: Up 95%
Premium salad spinner Sweetgreen was a hot debutante when it hit the market at $28 in late 2021. The IPO opened at $52. By March of last year, the stock bottomed out at a little over $6. The concept was expanding at a brisk pace, but a lack of profitability was just one problem keeping Sweetgreen off the radars of growth investors.
Sweetgreen is a seller of high-priced salads. It thrives on busy lunch crowds, often consisting of affluent office workers placing combined orders. A big revenue driver for the chain is Sweetgreen Outpost, a batch delivery program through which businesses apply for in-office delivery stations. Orders get pooled every morning, delivered before lunchtime. The program was hit hard in the pandemic, but it’s thriving now that companies are back to in-office work and personal connections.
Revenue rose a better-than-expected 29% in its latest quarter. New eatery openings and a 6% increase in same-store sales are driving the top-line growth. Sweetgreen is still posting losses, but its restaurant-level profit margin is dramatically improving. Investors have responded, with the shares more than tripling over the past year. The stock has already nearly doubled this year, and it’s only mid-March.
3. Instacart: Up 59%
I wasn’t the only one initially hesitant when Instacart hit the market in the fall of last year. Did we really need another publicly traded player in the cutthroat world of third-party delivery apps? The market’s initial reaction was a yawn. Instacart went public at $30, and that’s exactly where it closed at the end of its first week of trading.
Business hasn’t improved since its trading floor premiere. The same company with a prospectus that promoted a compound annual growth rate of 80% between 2018 and 2022 in its prospectus has slowed. Revenue rose just 19% in 2023, half of the growth it posted the year before. In its first quarter as a public company, sales rose a mere 6%, and it announced layoffs in February.
But Instacart knows a thing or two about the grocery aisle, and its saving grace is that its business model is already profitable. It also dominates its niche. Analysts see revenue growing a modest 8% this year and 9% come 2025, but they also see profitability improving sharply in that time. Don’t obsess about the ingredients. Just enjoy the recipe.
— Rick Munarriz
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Source: The Motley Fool