[ad_1]
Three unlikely winners of 2024 can lead the way in the year ahead.
Some of the hottest stocks of 2024 may surprise you. A few more than 100 stocks with market caps north of $2 billion doubled over the past year. Some of the unlikely winners include a legacy airline, an online dating app, and even a pair of Argentinian banks.
They’re unlikely to repeat the feat in 2025, but I have some names that I think can double again in the coming year. Reddit (RDDT -0.70%), Qifu (QFIN 2.80%), and Hims and Hers Health (HIMS -3.71%) trounced the market in 2024 but still seem to have more in the tank. Here’s a closer look at these three stocks that I think can double again in 2025.
1. Reddit
There are plenty of investors who steer clear of initial public offerings (IPOs). They prefer a little more seasoning in the market to make sure that they’re legit portfolio workhorses, even when they’re household names.
Reddit was one of the more prolific debutantes in the IPO class of 2024 when it went public at $34. It’s gone on to be one of this year’s biggest gainers regardless of its publicly traded tenure.
The company’s stock has soared 387% heading into the final trading day of the year, nearly quintupling since its market debut in March. This is a big jump for a popular online forum that bills itself as a community of communities.
Isn’t the Reddit community notoriously vocal against monetization, the one thing that its investors need to continue succeeding? It’s a better story than you probably think.
You’ll never get a second chance at making a first impression, and Reddit has hit the ground running in a little more than nine months of trading. When revenue growth slowed from 38% in 2022 to 21% last year, some naysayers figured that its springtime IPO was an exit strategy.
This hasn’t been the case. The top-line upticks have accelerated in each of this year’s first three quarterly reports, posting year-over-year increases of 48%, 54%, and 68%, respectively.
This is also no longer just a revenue-growth story. Reddit surprised the market with a quarterly profit in its latest report, the first time that the platform has generated positive earnings outside of the seasonally potent fourth quarter.
Three months ago, analysts were modeling a small loss for Reddit in 2025. Now they’re forecasting a profit of $0.74 a share. This prices the shares at a sky-high 224 times forward earnings — but momentum is on its side. The degree of its bottom-line beats has widened with every passing financial update.
The community keeps growing. There are now 97.2 million daily active users, 47% higher than Reddit’s reach a year earlier. Reddit is a free platform, and advertising makes up a thick 90% slice of the revenue mix. Marketers appreciate access to this unique, young, and jaded community that isn’t easily accessible anywhere else.
There’s also a lot of monetization potential internationally, as half of its user base is now outside of the U.S. but accounts for just 17% of the platform’s ad revenue. Reddit stands out as a social media stock that should keep trending higher in 2025.
2. Qifu
If you’re looking for a stock that has more than doubled in 2024 but is still cheap on an earnings multiple basis, you can travel virtually to the other end of the world. Qifu is a credit-tech platform that aims to provide credit solutions to China’s underserved consumers and small businesses. A whopping 81% of its users are in the country’s smaller rural cities, and 70% of these borrowers are under 40.
Qifu has 55.2 million cumulative users with approved credit lines, a 12% increase over the past year. It uses artificial intelligence (AI)-powered credit-assessment capabilities to pair its consumers and enterprises with the best fit among its 162 financial-institution partners.
Revenue growth was flat in 2022 and 2023 before returning to modest top-line gains in 2024, but the platform has been highly profitable for the last six years.
Many investors are skeptical when it comes to Chinese stocks, but Qifu is already returning money to its shareholders and has been aggressively buying back stock. It’s more than doubled its divided since initiating a payout policy three years ago, currently yielding more than 3%. Despite seeing its stock climb 138% in 2024, Qifu is currently trading for less than eight times trailing earnings.
3. Hims and Hers Health
Finally, there’s Hims and Hers, a stock that has soared 183% in 2024. The telehealth specialist was initially more Hims than Hers, launching seven years ago as a place for men to score hair loss and erectile dysfunction treatments in a more convenient and discrete way than in-office consultations to secure the required prescriptions. It has broadened its scope to cover everything from birth control to GLP-1 weight loss injections.
Revenue has risen by at least 45% in every quarter since the company went public almost four years ago. The year-over-year top-line jump was a healthy 77% in its latest report. After years of red ink, Hims and Hers turned profitable this year.
There are regulatory and competitive risks here, but these are walls of worry that investors have been weathering for years. Analysts see revenue and earnings growth decelerating in 2025, but the climate is kind right now.
[ad_2]
Source link