Investing

4 Top Jefferies Growth Stock Calls All Have Big Potential Catalysts

Lee Jackson

Published: April 10, 2019 7:05 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 10:18 pm

Increasingly, the Wall Street firms we cover are starting to agree that while the future is still bright for the U.S. economy, it may be one of stock market gains that are much lower than the norm has been over the past 10 years. When that is the case, then investing strategies often shift from indexing to a more disciplined stock-picking routine, and that’s when investors need solid growth ideas.

Jefferies highlights its top growth stocks to buy each week, and this week is no exception. While these stocks are better suited for accounts that have a higher risk tolerance, they all make good sense now and have outstanding upside potential. We found four that look extremely good now.

Activision Blizzard

This remains a top video gaming pick on Wall Street and Jefferies is still very positive on the shares. Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) develops and publishes online, personal computer (PC), video game console, handheld, mobile and tablet games worldwide. The company develops and publishes interactive entertainment software products through retail channels or digital downloads and downloadable content to a range of gamers.

Shares of the gaming giant have been volatile and are down a stunning 45% from highs posted last fall. Some recent positive announcements could be meaningful for the stock to regain traction. The analysts said this:

The company announced that Call of Duty’s (CoD) Battle Royale mode, Blackout, will be free in April and released new content. We believe Activision Blizzard is testing the free to play model with its crown jewel franchise and think that we could see a more permanent conversion. Spiketrap data shows that these announcements pushed CoD net online sentiment score to levels not seen since its launch in Oct. We expect that a permanently free Blackout mode would allow CoD to better compete with games like Fortnite and would more than offset pressure on the $60 game business.

The shareholders receive a 0.79% dividend. Jefferies price target for the stock is $60, while the Wall Street consensus target is $52.70. The stock was last seen trading at $47.01 a share.

Amazon

This is the absolute leader in online retail, and recently it opened its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) serves consumers through retail websites that primarily include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers.

The company serves developers and enterprises through Amazon Web Services, which provides computing, storage, database, analytics, applications and deployment services that enable virtually various businesses. AWS is also the undisputed leader in the cloud now, and many top analysts see the company expanding and moving up the enterprise information value chain and targeting a larger total addressable market.

Consistent with data from 2018, digital marketing users overwhelmingly cited Amazon as the fastest-growing channel for advertising budgets. Many retailers also are leveraging their Amazon advertising data to retarget users on other channels (namely Facebook) to drive traffic and sales to their own websites (bypassing Amazon marketplace or FBA fees).

Jefferies sees more upside to shares over the coming years and explained why:

Longer term, we see a road map to $3,000 for AMZN, supported by our sum-of-the-parts work. The SOTP analysis even includes what we believe to be conservative estimates around growth (expect retail to continue to decelerate) and multiples. AWS, advertising and 3P are all expected to grow faster than the retail business, are accretive to margins and are higher multiple businesses. Additionally, new businesses including healthcare, where we expect them to play in Rx, would be generally incremental to our forecasted growth

Jefferies has a whopping $2,400 target price, and the consensus target is $2,073.55 The shares closed most recently at $1,835.34.

Match

Jefferies notes that, despite a big run, the stock is cheap compared to competitors. Match Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH) is the worldwide leader in online dating products in terms of revenue, monthly active users and paid members. Its portfolio of dating sites includes several of the most popular products: Match, Meetic, OKCupid, Tinder, POF and Twoo. It has four of the top-five highest-grossing dating apps in North America and three of the top-five worldwide.

With more and more millennials turning to online dating, the prospects for this company remain incredibly strong. Toss in the computer literacy of young Americans, and it makes sense that the stocks in this area would show robust growth. Some top Wall Street analysts feel that as much as a stunning 50% of all dates will begin online by 2022.

The analysts said this:

We were out with a thesis refresh on Match following our meetings with management this week. We continue to forecast sustainable mid-high teen revenue growth and high-30% margins, primarily driven by Tinder and international. We note that the non-Tinder profile remains mixed and expectations are for a softer first half of 2019 and modest growth in the second half of 2019. Bumble and Facebook remain the top competitors, though management noted that they are not seeing any slowdown as a result of competition, with Tinder still at 2x the subs and 3x the rev of Bumble. Our latest first quarter Tinder app ranking checks show that rankings have come in above 2018 quarterly levels, which is consistent with management commentary on the fourth quarter call.

The $64 Jefferies price target compares with the $58.12 consensus target. Shares closed on Tuesday at $56.66.

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Tesla

This has been one of the most volatile stocks, and talked about companies, over the past two years, and Jefferies remains positive on the shares. Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) manufactures and sells electric vehicles, particularly its high-end Model S and X, as well as the forthcoming mass-market-oriented Model 3.

Tesla also generates revenue from selling zero-emission vehicle credits to original equipment manufacturers, installing, operating and selling solar energy systems (previously SolarCity), and manufacturing and selling energy storage systems to customers.

The stock has been volatile, and CEO Elon Musk is unpredictable as well. However, the analysts remain positive:

The company reported model production/delivery numbers with overall totals coming in slightly below our estimates and skewing toward M3s. They were unable to keep up with US Model 3 orders but the Model S/X mix (S/X deliveries were 40% below our forecast) is likely to disproportionately hit profitability. If we assume $25,000 gross cash profit per Model S/X, that suggests a $200 million shortfall to our Q1 auto gross profit forecast of $840 million and our group EBIT of -$50 million.

Jefferies has set a $450 price target. The consensus estimate is $316.75, and shares ended Tuesday at $272.31 apiece.

These four companies all offer investors strength in their specific industries and the ability to remain market leaders. Their stocks are suitable for growth accounts with a higher degree of risk tolerance.