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Detease: Motley Fool’s “Next Magnificent 7” (Plus three “Next Next 7” Bonuses)

Who are the stocks that will take the mantle from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon et al? Thinkolator answers await for the "Next Magnificent 7" of smaller growth stocks being hinted at in Motley Fool's Market Pass promos.

The Motley Fool is pitching its “Market Pass” service ($998 first year, ? auto-renewal price, no refunds), which is their “package deal” subscription (Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks, Real Estate Winners and Rule Your Retirement, plus an “Ultimate Portfolio” that they choose from the recommendations of those services), and the hook they’re using to draw us in is a “next Magnificent 7” promo… here’s how they introduce it:

“The ‘Magnificent 7’ stocks have delivered Motley Fool members returns like 95X… 221X… and even 445X, and were responsible for nearly ⅔ of the market’s gains last year alone.

“But considering they now make up nearly ⅓ of the U.S. stock market, have collectively been recommended 229 times by The Motley Fool over the past two decades, and have a combined market cap 3X the GDP of Japan, and the creator of the term himself just wrote an ‘R.I.P Magnificent Seven Era’ memo…

“Our top analysts have at long last taken it upon themselves to identify what they consider ‘The NEXT Magnificent 7’ – a group of potential superpower stocks with 74X more room to run still flying under the radar of the mainstream financial media!”

And that has piqued the interest of Gumshoe readers, of course, and they wanna know: What are the next seven?

So let’s dig in, see what clues they drop, and figure out some names for you. Ready?

If you want a little back story, the Fool lists those “Magnficent 7” stocks for you, including the number of times they’ve recommended and re-recommended all of those stocks — I can’t verify all of those re-recommendations, but I do know that they’ve used all of them as teaser picks at one point or another over the past 15 years…

“All in all, we’ve recommended:

  • Nvidia 19 times
  • Apple 22 times
  • Microsoft 24 times
  • Amazon 28 times
  • Meta 34 times
  • Alphabet 43 times
  • Tesla 59 times

And they highlight that what all of those recommendations had in common was that the stocks were dominant players in high-growth areas… though some of them went on to take over even larger markets in the years after they were recommended, like NVIDIA in GPU chipsets for artificial intelligent projects.

But they think the best gains will come from elsewhere in the future. Here’s how they put it:

“Back in March 2000, Microsoft, Cisco, General Electric, Intel, and Exxon Mobil were the largest S&P 500 companies, making up 18% of the index.

“And while forecasts showed those five companies growing sales at a 16% compound annual growth rate over the next two years…

“They ultimately delivered just 8%, and as a group went on to underperform the S&P 500 by 21 percentage points over the following two years….

“… while we believe “The Magnificent 7” are great stocks still worth owning…

“(And considering how “crowded” those seven stocks are, you probably already do.)

“Growth investors focused solely on them are likely missing a far bigger opportunity….

“You may get infinitely more upside by putting your money in an entirely different collection of overlooked stocks!

“Imagine a group of stocks that compared to “The Magnificent 7” are…

“A mere 1/74th the size by market cap…

“Still flying under the radar of the mainstream financial media…

“Positioned to own some of the biggest and fastest-growing markets of the NEXT decade…”

So that’s the basic idea… what are the next great growth sectors, and what are the companies who could become dominant in those areas?

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More from the Foolies:

“I’m not expecting anybody to take over for the iPhone… Windows… or Google search any time soon.

“But what if that were a prediction we didn’t have to make in the first place?

“What if instead of trying to ‘guess’ what finally topples those juggernauts that have been dominating their sectors for 10… 15… and even 25 years now…

“We instead concentrated on the next sectors that could be just as impactful and just as large?”

There’s a hopeful logic in all of that, despite the challenges we humans face when trying to predict the future… so what are the stocks they like, the “next Magnificent 7?” Let’s go through them in order, and see if they drop enough clues for us to ID the “secret” stocks for you… they go over the sectors first, then later drop some hints about the specific stocks.

And each of these sectors, they believe, has the potential to be larger than any of the markets the Magnificent 7 dominate today (e-commerce, search, electric vehicles, etc.).

The companies are also much smaller, they say their picks have an average market cap of about $25 billion (the “Magnificent 7” average almost $2 trillion, thanks largely to the gigantic size of Apple and Microsoft, even though Tesla, the smallest of them, has dropped to a $600 billion market cap)…. so that’s where the “74X smaller” bit comes in, the “Mag 7” average market cap is $1.85 billion or so, which is 74X larger than $25 billion.

“Cybersecurity – a projected $2 trillion opportunity

“Cybersecurity is already big business. But McKinsey projects a 10X growth opportunity over the next decade as the cybersecurity market could grow to $2 trillion.”

Some more specific clues about this one:

“They serve a whopping 41 million users across the 7,700 enterprise customers that have signed up for the company’s zero-trust cybersecurity platform. Given the huge appetite for protection from cyberattacks, they’ve been able to continue landing new customers even under challenging conditions in the economy, building on 48% sales gains in fiscal 2023.”

And the government is spending more on them, too:

“Further tailwinds are on the way in the form of the federal government, with the revenue from that sector soaring by more than 90% from year-earlier levels for our “Next Magnificent 7” Cybersecurity Winner, due in part to an executive order from the White House calling for greater adoption of zero-trust security practices among government agencies.”

Those hints are a perfect match for Zscaler (ZS), which the Motley Fool owns shares of and has recommended for many years.  At a market cap of about $32 billion, ZS is currently valued at about 75X expected 2024 earnings (adjusted… like some other high-growth tech stocks, it wouldn’t be profitable unless they used massive stock-based compensation to cover a lot of their operating expenses).  Their last earnings report included a slightly disappointing forecast for the coming year, so the stock came down a little bit, but they’ve certainly been growing fast and expect that to continue — they’re in the midst of what analysts expect to be average (adjusted) earnings growth of roughly 30% for several years, and they’ve continued to grow their customer base, including the big customers that everyone wants (customers who spend $100K+ are up more than 20%, and the $1 million+ customers up more than 30% in 2023).

Here’s how the company describes itself:

“The world’s largest any-to-any security cloud platform

“Zscaler was founded in 2007 on the visionary idea that the internet would be the new corporate network, as the cloud becomes the new data center. From day one, our vision has been to create a world in which the exchange of information is always seamless and secure.

“We built a new platform – the Zscaler Zero Trust ExchangeTM – from the ground up to securely connect individual users, devices, and applications. Our unique platform enables our customers to become more secure, agile, competitive, operationally efficient – helping them realize the full promise of digital transformation.​”

Very impressive company, great growth, and a rich valuation to go along with it.  Don’t know it well, but there’s a free article here from the Fool (from December) if you want a little of their perspective, and you can check out the latest earnings call presentation here.

Next!

“Gene Editing – a potential $10 trillion opportunity….

“MIT predicts that more than 60 gene and cell therapies could be available to consumers as soon as 2030.

“It is safe to say this could upend the $10 trillion health care market, which is why our experts expect one of the “NEXT Magnificent 7” to emerge here, and could potentially make early investors a fortune…..

“Our top pick to dominate Gene Editing has only been rec’d two times.”

More clues:

“One of the first companies founded to focus specifically on CRISPR-based therapeutics, and its founders include a Nobel laureate who was one of pioneers of CRISPR. If you’ve never heard of it, think of CRISPR like a precise genetic pair of “scissors” that offer a way to permanently silence mutant genes and even potentially correct them by introducing edited DNA as a replacement.”

And they say it has a market cap of only $2.6 billion, so it’s probably the smallest one in this group. The two Nobel laureates whose work was foundational to CRISPR technology are Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier (they shared the prize for Chemistry in 2020), and both have acted to commercialize their work — Charpentier is most involved with CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), which she co-founded, but this tease must be about Intellia Therapeutics, co-founded by Doudna… mostly just because CRSP is twice as big, it hasn’t been below a $3 billion market cap since 2020, while NTLA did indeed have a $2.6 billion market cap last week.

For this one, the Foolies also tease their second-place contender, as a little bonus, here’s what they say about that one:

“With exclusive global rights to a cutting-edge gene editing technology, this company is paving the way to unlock the future of medicine. The untapped potential is enormous… because this trailblazer is paving the way for groundbreaking treatments across a spectrum of diseases. But with its market cap of just $2.69 billion, this under-the-radar gem still remains OUTSIDE the spotlight of the mainstream financial media. Plus, The Motley Fool has only recommended the stock once – but never in Stock Advisor or Rule Breakers!”

Given that I’m pretty sure there are really only two “roughly $2.6 billion market cap” gene editing stocks out there, this one must be Beam Therapeutics (BEAM).

Disclosures indicate that The Motley Fool newsletters have recommended all of the publicly traded stocks that most folks would call primarily “gene editing” companies, but it sounds like they’re calling out two of the more established ones here — first place Intellia, second place Beam Therapeutics. The other stocks you’re likely to run across in this little segment of the market, in case you’re looking for a list, are Editas (EDIT), which was the early leader in the eyes of investors, many years ago, in part just because it was the first one to go public (EDIT, NTLA and CRSP all IPO’d in 2016), and then the somewhat new companies Caribou Biosciences (CRBU), the second company co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, and Verve Therapeutics (VERV).

The world of gene-editing is fascinating, and the companies all have different strategies and near term (next five years) prospects, and have early work aimed at different genetic disorders and diseases and still, to some degree, warring intellectual property claims, but it has not been a pretty area for investors. All are pre-revenue, for the most part, and have been giant consumers of cash, despite all having pretty lucrative partnership deals with larger biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and unless you sold your shares near the speculative peak in 2021, it’s likely that you’d have lost money on most of them… CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) has done the best, and among the rest NTLA and BEAM are the closest to keeping up with the S&P 500 since they went public. At least so far.

That’s about all I can say about these companies without further revealing my ignorance of the science. Of the group, only CRSP is likely to have a meaningful amount of revenue by 2026 or 2027, and none are anywhere near being profitable, so I’m sure there will continue to be wild ups and downs as they make (or fail to make) progress in developing therapies and gene editing treatments. If you’ve got a favorite in this area, then you probably understand all of this better than I do — feel free to jump into the comments below and let us all know.

Next one?  They jump right to the hottest sector in the world right now…

“Artificial Intelligence – a projected $15.7 trillion opportunity

“You won’t be surprised to hear that AI is one of the sectors our analysts are targeting for the “NEXT Magnificent 7” but…

“You may be quite surprised to learn that none of Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, or Google is the stock our analysts have identified to dominate the NEXT decade of the AI revolution….

“Our No. 1 pick for Artificial Intelligence has been rec’d a mere five times across the Fool.”

Other clues:

“our winner in the AI space is another cybersecurity company. AI depends on trusted channels so information can freely flow across networks. That requires network, device, and data security to allow AI-enabled software to automate tasks, process data, and make lightning-quick decisions to predict, identify, prevent, and neutralize cyberthreats…

“… their stock is already surging, up more than 4X over the past half-decade.”

That’s not a great crop of clues, sadly enough, so we can’t be definitive — three of the biggest cybersecurity stocks, Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Crowdstrike (CRWD) and Fortinent (FTNT) have similar returns over the past ~ five years, all reaching roughly that 4X return pretty recently… but they might well mean it’s only been around for five years, which would make Crowdstrike (CRWD) the most likely match. It could be a few other companies of roughly the same vintage, including perhaps even Cloudflare (NET), but most likely it’s CRWD. Which has some similarities to Zscaler in offering a cloud-native security platform… here’s a recent free Fool article on CRWD, which is, to its credit consistently profitable and growing very quickly, with revenue and earnings growth both expected to be in the 25-30% neighborhood over the next couple years… though you’re paying a stiff price for that growth, with the stock valued at about 100X adjusted 2024 earnings estimates.

I have a hard time picking winners and losers in the cybersecurity business, mostly because the competition is fierce and I have no great insight into which company has the best product. They’ve all had pretty public blow-ups and disappointments at one point or another, but right now CRWD is the most popular (with investors) and fastest-growing large cybersecurity company, and trades at the richest valuation — so that’s at least one indirect endorsement from the investing world that they’re going to be the big future winner.

And the Foolies throw in a second-place pick for the A.I. sector, too — might we have a clearer answer there? Here are the clues:

“AI’s massive $15.7 TRILLION projected market potential has everyone’s eyes fixed on ChatGPT and AI in the digital.. However, this highly profitable business is unleashing the power of AI in the realm of industrial automation. Think smart manufacturing systems, equipment monitoring, etc. This under-the-radar AI stock has steadily growing earnings and free cash flow – and we believe it’s only scratching the surface of its potential to revolutionize industrial processes. Yet another top “NEXT Magnificent 7” contender stock you won’t find in Stock Advisor OR Rule Breakers!”

Well, a company that has free cash flow might stand out a bit in this group, so that’s intriguing. There are several reasonable guesses for this, including more high-profile names in industrial automation like Symbotic (SYM) and its robotic warehouses, or Rockwell Automation (ROK) in general automation, or Cognex (CGNX). If we stretch a bit, we could even add UIPath (PATH) or Teradyne (TER) to the list of possibles…

… but the Thinkolator’s best guess for this one is the somewhat lesser-known PTC (PTC), which is a decently-sized company (market cap $22 billion) and has core businesses in computer-assisted design and product lifecycle management, and has been pitched as an “internet of things” stock in the past.

And yes, PTC is active in using AI for industrial automation, though it’s probably not a core part of the business at this point… and has been more consistent than most of those names I mentioned above in growing both earnings and free cash flow. Today, it is valued at about 38X 2024’s forecast for adjusted earnings, and is expected to grow earnings at about a 20% annual clip going forward, with margins improving pretty meaningfully over time, so that’s at the top end of “reasonable” in my book.

Moving on… to the sector that led to the most vigorous teasing of NVIDIA back in 2018 and 2019, when folks thought we’d all be wearing headsets all the time by now…

“Augmented & Virtual Reality – a projected $8 trillion opportunity

“Apple just launched the Vision Pro, giving us a glimpse into what the future of augmented and virtual reality could look like.

“Citigroup projects that the total addressable market could be worth anywhere from $8 trillion on the low end… or even as much as $13 trillion by 2030.”

So what’s the stock for this sector?

“The company formerly famous for creating the Taser has quietly revolutionized its entire business model. Nowadays, 90% of their overall revenue comes from cloud-based subscription products – that’s a radical shift, and our team has taken notice.”

That’s the one which is most clearly given away here… that’s clearly Axon (AXN), formerly known as Taser (TASR was the old ticker, before they changed their name in 2017 — and yes, I remember Tom Gardner at the Motley Fool pitching Taser 15-20 years ago, so they’ve liked it for a long time). Axon’s brilliant vision, beyond the limits of the less-lethal weapon they commercialized, was that saving police camera footage for use as evidence would be a huge business, and it has worked out spectacularly well. It’s also the kind of business that could be extraordinarily sticky, given the need to preserve evidence in perpetuity…. and given the fact that once a police department or a district attorney commits to one video storage system that works and is trusted, they’ve got no incentive to every try a competitor.

And it’s not just their evidence storage, they also do training, which is where the AR/VR stuff comes in… here’s how the Fool puts it:

“They’ve created immersive VR training programs that they license to law enforcement and emergency response professionals, allowing them to train for real-world solutions well in advance of encountering them. As their CEO says, 2023 was the year that virtual reality went from an interesting concept to ‘ready for prime time.'”

I don’t know what the potential scale of this business might be, but they have spent years trying to expand internationally, and governments and security forces don’t ever seem to get smaller. Axon is pretty richly valued now, particularly after a great earnings report earlier this year, but has been a very consistent grower — right now it’s valued at about 75X expected 2024 (adjusted) earnings, with earnings growth widely expected to stay in the 30% range… here’s a free Fool article about their blowout earnings and the stocks’ surge in value last week.

Next!

“FinTech – a projected $20 trillion opportunity

“The future of finance is another MASSIVE $20 trillion growth opportunity that’s up for grabs, according to McKinsey….

“Our projected No. 1 winner in the FinTech space has been rec’d just once.”

Hints about that one:

“… our FinTech winner manages an e-commerce-focused payment platform with customers in regulated online gaming, social gaming, cryptocurrency, and financial services. Not only are those growing faster than the broader economy, but you’ll notice that many are still nascent markets – giving our company massive room to run, with far less competition than more traditional e-commerce platforms.”

And they say it’s also pretty small, “a mere $3.7B market cap.”

Which means our best match here is a Canadian fintech company, Nuvei (NVEI), which as of about a year ago added Canadian superstar Ryan Reynolds to its cap table. They do focus on areas where existing payments companies probably do a worse job, like gaming, gambling and cryptocurrencies, and they’ve been growing nicely of late… though like many e-commerce exposed companies, they had a sharp dropoff in earnings after the 2021 peak, which helped to bring the shares down (it was also a short target at the time, Spruce Capital went after them in December of 2021, helping to accelerate the stock’s collapse — and Spruce Capital remains critical of Nuvei, for whatever that’s worth (at least as of April of last year, they had issued many updated-and-still-negative reports). According to the disclosures in their November 2021 podcast interview with CEO Philip Fayer, the Fool had already recommended Nuvei at that point, about a year after their IPO… so if that’s really our match, it has never been re-recommended during the past couple years of gradual decline).

Analysts believe Nuvei is on track to start growing again, the current estimate is that they’ll get to $2.11 in adjusted earnings per share this year, so that would mean the stock is probably the cheapest on this list at about 13X forward earnings. It may well be higher risk, as well, if Spruce Point was on to anything, but gosh, would Ryan Reynolds lead us astray? He’s so handsome and likable!

Nuvei will report tomorrow evening, after the market close, so we’ll have some more information then. Interesting story — there are a wide range of companies in the “fintech” space, particularly around payments, but most of the established and profitable ones are on the pricey side compared to Nuvei… and the one most often picked by “value” folks also happens to be at around 12X earnings — that’s the dramatically larger pioneer PayPal (PYPL), in case you’re curious (that’s definitely not the stock the Foolies are picking here, given the $3.7b market cap clue, but they do recommend and own PayPal… and Stansberry was one of the folks picking it last Fall, for example).

We’re still not done!  Two more “hot” sectors to go…

“Next-Gen Energy – a projected $23 trillion opportunity

“That’s right – according to the U.S. Department of Energy we’re looking at a $23 trillion global opportunity in the clean energy transition.

T”o put that in perspective:

“The entire software market Microsoft’s got its stranglehold on is worth “only” $911 billion….

“… our top stock for Next-Gen Energy has also been recommended by us just once before.”

Clues for this one:

“This little-known Danish company that’s been recommended just ONE TIME across the entire Motley Fool universe envisions itself as the world’s leading green energy company by 2030. As the world’s largest developer of offshore wind energy – the fastest-growing green energy technology on Earth, projected to expand at a more than 20% annual rate heading toward 2030 – they’re off to a great start.

“But what makes this company truly exciting is their commitment to pairing that success with further development in onshore wind… solarhydrogen… and green fuels.”

That’s the Danish utility firm Ørsted (ORSTED in Copenhagen, DNNGY or DOGEF OTC in the US). They’ve had a terrible couple years, collapsing in 2022 and 2023 as rising rates put the kibosh on a lot of offshore wind projects, particularly in the US, but that does mean they’re now down to a potentially more attractive valuation of about 19X expected earnings. I don’t know which Fool service might have recommended them, or when, but it looks to me like they’re still in a pretty dramatic restructuring as they work through all their canceled projects, particularly Ocean Wind off New Jersey, and try to figure out where they’re headed. They are working on hydrogen and green fuels, particularly at home in Denmark, but from my quick glance at the business it looks like their income statement and investment will be overwhelmingly dominated by offshore and onshore wind power projects for the foreseeable future.

As of their last investor presentation, they’re still expecting positive adjusted EBITDA — roughly 25 billion Danish Kroner — in 2024. IN US$ terms, that would be about $3.5 billion… so at an enterprise value of $30 billion (market cap about $23 billion, but they do have some debt), they’re valued at ~8X expected EBITDA. I have no idea what the growth prospects are like in the near future, that number is pretty similar to their 2023 adjusted numbers (though with the big project cancellations, the non-adjusted numbers were a big loss for 2023). This is a tough and very capital-intensive business, I can’t say that I see the appeal… but they are ambitious, they are supported by strong renewable energy incentives in Europe and some hope for projects to go ahead in the US now that the expectations have had a chance to get normalized a bit, and maybe they’ll turn it around.

And they had a second-place “Next Gen Energy” stock to tease, too…

“Imagine a company at the forefront of the massive $23 TRILLION shift towards alternative fuels and renewable energy… but with a twist: This potential “dark horse” of Next-Gen energy is transforming 15 million metric tons of the world’s animal by-products, roughly 15% of global yield, into “green diesel.” Not only does this process significantly reduce CO2 emissions, but it also represents an ingenious recycling of resources. The result? A business where free cash flow has exploded over the past few years. With its shareholder-friendly leadership and only about a $6.8 billion market cap – 275X smaller than the average of the current Magnificent 7 stocks! – we think this under-the-radar stock has a lot of room to grow.”

That is almost certainly Darling Ingredients (DAR), which is a partner, along with Valero (VLO), in Diamnd Green Diesel. Darling does a lot of really gross stuff, and makes a lot of money doing it… here’s how they describe themselves:

“A pioneer in circularity, Darling Ingredients Inc. takes material from the animal agriculture and food industries, and transforms them into valuable ingredients that nourish people, feed animals and crops, and fuel the world with renewable energy. The company operates over 260 facilities in more than 15 countries and processes about 15% of the world’s animal agricultural by-products, produces about 30% of the world’s collagen (both gelatin and hydrolyzed collagen), and is one of the largest producers of renewable energy.”

I’d much rather buy Darling than Orsted — they have had a couple weak quarters, including the one they announced last week, and they are not currently growing, but they have unique capabilities and the stock is pretty cheap. They should be back to earning $4+ per share in profits by 2025 and probably growing in the mid-single-digits after that, so at $42 per share it’s valued at only about 10X forward earnings. The Motley Fool first recommended Darling more than a decade ago, but they haven’t talked about it much lately.

“Big Data – a projected $3.6 trillion opportunity

“It’s no secret that data is the lifeblood of the digital age.

“Many experts even call data ‘the new oil’… which is why Forbes recently estimated the Big Data opportunity could be worth a whopping $3.6 trillion by 2030.”

And they get pretty generous with the clues for this one:

“The company made its name by providing open-source database software, which means users can access the company’s core database code for free ‌and even make specialized modifications. However, they offer more advanced software and support for a fee, and that business has grown to more than 35,200 customers in over 100 countries – with sales skyrocketing thanks to rapid adoption of their Atlas cloud “database-as-a-service” product.

“In today’s increasingly cloud-first world, our Big Data Winner provides foundational technologies well suited for modern web applications. Partnerships with current ‘Magnificent 7’ companies in Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet show they’re being embraced as a key service provider among the cloud-infrastructure giants.

“In plain English, this could be THE underlying database platform for the future of the cloud. Little wonder their stock is up nearly 5X over the past five years.”

That’s MongoDB (MDB), which was a very popular IPO pre-COVID and went through the big up and down cycle in 2021 and 2022, but has come roaring back since the Spring of 2023, presumably because they’ve jumped into the AI fray with both feet with their MongoDB Atlas platform. The Foolies have been a big fan of MDB for more than a year, though I don’t know when their first recommendation was, or for which newsletter.

Like most popular stocks that have people excited about AI and technology growth, MongoDB is pretty expensive — it’s valued at about 20X sales right now, which is generally the top end of rational in my book, reserved for the very best companies. They may be in that category, but I don’t understand the database business well enough to make that judgement with a straight face — they are growing at a rate which endorses the value of their platform, they have grown revenue at an average rate of about 50% per year since going public, so they’re obviously doing something really well, but they’re just barely getting to be profitable on an adjusted basis, so the expectation is that they’ll have $2.92 in adjusted earnings per share this year, which means they’re valued at pretty close to 150X forward adjusted earnings.

(If you use GAAP earnings, they probably won’t be profitable for many years — stock-based compensation is 25-30% of revenue each year, so I’d say they’re in the “most egregious” category of stock-based compensation among the large and popular growth companies, right up there with Snowflake, Atlassian, The Trade Desk, Roblox, Affirm, Coinbase and Zscaler, most of which have insane stock-based compensation and are also valued at more than 100X free cash flow, which means they really need to grow, and they really need investors to continue to ignore stock-based compensation).

Will MongoDB become a great “Next Magnificent 7” leader? They’ve got the revenue growth for it, if they can keep that up, and they do have some good partnerships with most of big tech, and certainly there’s tons of demand for database software for AI and everything else these days — beyond that, I don’t know them well enough to do anything more than guess, and they’re too richly valued for me to count on guesses when theyr’e going up against giants like Oracle… but I’d be happy to hear your thinking about that or any of the other “next Magnificent 7” ideas the Foolies are dangling for us today. Have a favorite? Think they’re all great, or all crazy? Let us know with a comment below.

Disclosure: Of the companies mentioned above, I own shares of and/or call options on NVIDIA, Alphabet, Amazon, The Trade Desk, UIPath, Symbotic and Cloudflare. I will not buy or sell any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.

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hariszafar
March 4, 2024 5:52 pm

I owned Darling for few years. Recently they bought couple of meat renders globally which impacted their balance sheet. Management is committing themselves to reduce debt in 2024. They are also entering sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) market in 2025 which has better economics compared to renewal diesel. Looking forward for Travis’s take on them.

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Jack E Peterson
Member
Jack E Peterson
March 4, 2024 6:53 pm

As always Travis, when I need guidance I come here. As you have noted in your lockbox how does one keep making money today but make good long term moves that will supposedly make it easier down the road? but how far down the road?
After reading Warren Buffet’s letter, I began to think about buying good companies at a fair price, rather than buying cheap lessor known, pre-earnings riskier bets.
Your analysis of Motley’s next 7 is great, but which ones can make us good returns this year. Or even in 2 years?

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Gino
Gino
March 4, 2024 10:06 pm

IOW you sold NVDA? How about GOOG?

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bastianberger
Member
bastianberger
March 5, 2024 11:13 am

Orsted doesn’t seem like a good idea to me: A capital intensive business which doesn’t scale, operating in a highly regulated market …

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hanns
hanns
March 5, 2024 12:23 pm

Thank you, Travis, for all your precious work!

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ironmac
Irregular
ironmac
March 5, 2024 3:36 pm

Great write up! Thank you. I just want to crow a bit about AXON which I purchased due to a small writeup in SeekingAlpha back when the company was known as Taser. That writeup, along with someone being shot in 2016, pushed me to buy the stock.

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doc5653
Irregular
doc5653
March 5, 2024 6:44 pm

I wonder what they have to say about Charlotte’s Web or Zoom. Charlotte’s Web is now a penny stock and I consider myself fortunate that although MF never said sell (at least when i was a subscriber) I got out with most of my gains intact in 2021. It’s been dribbling along at its pre-covid price for several years. I bought it in 2019 but not because I foretold a massive global lockdown. It was purely a lucky pick. I was about to sell it at the end of 2019 but then MF recommended it.

They were into a lot of speculative st9cks back then, many of which had long runways and did not survive increased costs of borrowing. They never talk about the failures.

IMHO David Gardner had the vision. When Tom was going it alone it was good but not as good as when David was on the team. With neither brother steering the ship, I see less value in MF.

My investing style has also changed with retirement. I’m more into income investing but also building up a portfolio of non-correlated assets classes like art, PM, timber, MLPs and certain REITs. At my age I don’t have time to recover from a huge drawdown. Their approach is not for me.

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Doc5653
Irregular
Doc5653
March 5, 2024 6:56 pm
Reply to  doc5653

Clarification: when I mentioned selling in 2021 despite no signal from MF I meant Zoom, not Charlotte’s Web. I was up about 5x on ZM and when it fell to 4x I dumped it. Now it’s at 2019 levels again.

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pipedreamer
pipedreamer
March 7, 2024 3:29 am
Reply to  doc5653

I currently have the Stock Advisor service, even though I don’t pay much attention to it. I can see they put Charlotte’s Web in the penalty box (i.e. hold) on Dec 20, 2022 and that’s the last update on it. I see the last update on Zoom to be a buy recommendation on Jul 7, 2022 which is down 45% (Stock Advisor has 5 buy recommendations on ZM, all of which are down).

David’s side has become “Team Rule Breakers” and Tom’s side has become “Tom Gardner and Team Everlasting,” and although David quit active stock picking, I see Tom still there in the reveal videos accompanying the stock picks.

Perhaps surprisingly, I currently prefer the Rule-Breakers service even without David. I think they’re following the framework well and they seem to care just a tad more about valuation. They also do a good job of communicating the risk involved in investing their way.

I have learned the hard way to make my own mind up about Motley Fool recommendations after joining in 2021. For reference all but 5 of Stock Advisor picks from 2021 are in the red, with many deeply so. I didn’t buy all of the stinkers, but still got burned on many.

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flyboy65
flyboy65
March 6, 2024 10:13 pm

Interesting that in my email box today three of the Motley Fool groupings are selling their MDB (Boss, Everlasting, IPO Trailblazers). To paraphrase their analysis – doesn’t mean all of the Fool groupings are selling, they’ve made money since first recommended, but MDB has some future potential issues that the Gumshoe article points out.

Thanks for all your hard work, it continually amazes me how much detailed analysis you provide on such a wide variety of stocks! Keep up the good work!

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bigorangedave
bigorangedave
March 7, 2024 10:15 am
Reply to  flyboy65

My MDB investment is up a little over 1000% since I bought 50 shares five years ago for $36 and change and an early MF suggestions. When I got their sell all notice yesterday, I was surprised especially after reading this earlier. So I sold half of my investment. Let’s see what I can do with the other half of the cash.

I also bought TASER back before it was AXON. That investment has grown to over six figures in my Roth from humble beginnings and regular additions over the years. The recent quarterly update from management was quite positive as they are hitting on all cylinders in multiple areas. It’s a little harder to buy more shares at these prices, so I watch for the pull backs.

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G.WALGENBACH
G.WALGENBACH
March 9, 2024 3:37 pm

FYI: Motley Fool’s reasons for Sell Rec on MDB

1. Technical Risk -What MongoDB offers today is losing ground to open-source alternatives as well as to competitive offerings within each major cloud superstore (Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) AWS, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Cloud). MongoDB’s database usage trends have consistently declined, falling from 26.4% in 2018 to 20.1% in 2023 as the marketplace has changed. Developers are migrating to open-source solutions (PostgreSQL and Redis), to solutions from the cloud titans (DynamoDB et al.), or to specialized databases for specific use cases. Rapid advancement in database technologies is encroaching on MDB’s territory.

2. Sales Risks – The net result of a lack of innovation is increased pressure on the sales team and rising sales costs. Of its $1.2 billion in gross profit over the trailing 12 months, MongoDB has allocated $942 million of it to SG&A. While it might “take money to make money,” MDB has continually delivered operating losses since we first bought it in 2018. Over the last 12 months, MongoDB has lost $236 million in operating income — a figure that has increased nearly threefold in the time we’ve held the stock.

3. Rewards Risks – During our long-term holding period, the company’s commitments to stock-based compensation have risen 20-fold to $435 million in the past year. Stock-based compensation now represents more than 35% of its $1.2 billion in gross profit. Add up the heavy spending on selling and the heavy load of stock grants, and I don’t see enough room in the negative space for our long-term rewards as shareowners.

4. Professional Management Risks – The largest stakeholders of MongoDB are index funds. The CEO owns less than one half of 1%. And among the institutional ranks, one of my favorite funds, the T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund (NASDAQMUTFUND: PRNHX), has been aggressively selling down its stake. This is a somewhat uncommon approach for that fund.

In my 30 years of Foolishness, declines in technical advantages alongside an increase in selling and share granting often happen within organizations that have moved from the founder/owner long-term mentality to a professional and more transactional form of leadership. Additionally, I don’t see changes on the board of directors to keep up with the rapid pace of change.

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pastorbroca
pastorbroca
March 10, 2024 6:12 am
Reply to  G.WALGENBACH

Thanks Walgenbach, great post.

MRREPAIRS
March 24, 2024 11:12 am

What is anyone’s favorite ETF or CEF that invest in the smaller up and coming biotechs?

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garagedoor
March 24, 2024 12:57 pm
Reply to  MRREPAIRS

Here is an article that might help you decide -https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/best-biotech-etfs-to-buy

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garagedoor
March 24, 2024 1:02 pm
Reply to  garagedoor
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