The S&P 500 is down 22% – Time to buy these 3 ultra-growth stocks

If you’re looking for bargains, there’s plenty to find right now. The S&P500 (^GSPC 3.06%) is trading around 19% below its high in early January, meaning around half of the index’s constituents are down even further. Most of the names leading the charge down are the growth names that led the charge up in 2021. And it’s among those stocks that you’ll find the best names to nibble at their lows.
Here’s a look at three ultra-growth stocks that it’s time for the true long-term to step up and add to their portfolios.
1.Paycom Software
It is an unknown name for most investors. Don’t let the lack of notoriety fool you, though – Paycom software (PAYC 7.13%) is a growth machine with plenty of room for further expansion. Expected revenue improvement of 26.4% for this year and expected sales growth of 23.2% for next year are fairly typical, while profits are growing at an even faster rate. There is no reason to think that the future will be much different.
Paycom helps businesses manage payroll processing more efficiently. It also offers related services such as scheduling, recruiting, and benefits, but facilitating the distribution of paychecks is central to what it does. It is not a particularly complicated software to design and deliver for computer coders. His clients love him all the same, because running an HR department can be a messy business. This all-in-one software makes it simple.
The stock’s halving since the November high suggests shareholders are concerned that an economic downturn could stunt Paycom’s growth by slowing hiring. And maybe it will… a little. The scope of the sale is arguably overstated, however. Paycom’s revenue and bottom line have grown steadily for years, regardless of the state of the economy at the time; its offerings simply make payroll and other HR functions too easy to manage not utilize.
PAYC Revenue Data (Quarterly) by YCharts
Furthermore, with the unemployment rate in the United States still near a record high of 3.6% and job openings still near a record high of 11.4 million (according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), we have yet to see any real evidence that any recessionary headwinds are actually weighing on the labor market.
2. DexCom
DexCom (DXCM 3.27%) manufactures medical devices. Namely, it manufactures continuous glucose monitors for diabetic patients. Its newest model is the G6, which not only handles the task of monitoring glucose levels, but can be managed with a smartphone and integrated with third-party insulin pumps. It can truly serve as a turnkey solution for diabetes management.
And the need for such technology has never been greater.
Thanks to a combination of increasingly poor diets and the resulting rise in obesity around the world – in addition to more testing and awareness – diabetes has become much more common. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 9.3% of the world’s population had diabetes in 2019, and it says 10.9% of its ever-growing population could have the disease by 2045.
Putting that in raw numbers, the number of people diagnosed with some form of diabetes could jump from just over 700 million to almost a billion over the next two decades, based on population growth projections provided by Worldometer. Not everyone will need blood glucose meters, but many will, and it’s possible that a good portion of this market is using blood glucose meters right now, but isn’t.
That’s what DexCom’s current growth projections imply, anyway. Analysts predict sales growth of 19.3% this year, followed by 20.2% growth in 2023. And like Paycom, profits are growing even faster than revenues.
3.Nvidia
Finally, add Nvidia (NVDA 5.55%) to your list of ultra-growth stocks to buy now when the market is more than a little depressed. Nvidia helped bring that load down. It is now down more than 40% since March and more than 53% below its peak in November.
You probably know the company as a maker of high-performance graphics cards favored by hardcore video gamers. This will continue to be an important part of its business. It turns out, however, that the same underlying technology used in graphics cards is also perfectly suited to handle massive data loads currently handled by enterprise data centers.
And it is particularly well suited for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The company is currently building and designing processors from the ground up specifically to meet the needs of AI developers. To that end, data center revenue eclipsed Nvidia’s video game revenue last quarter, with the use of artificial intelligence pushing the data center arm’s quarterly revenue up 83% d one year to the next.
This growth to date, however, only scratches the surface of the company’s potential. International Data Corp. says spending on AI solutions is likely to grow by 19.6% this year and stay slightly above that rate through 2025.
Analysts expect Nvidia to capture at least its fair share of this growth, modeling a 25.3% revenue improvement for the current fiscal year. Those same analysts expect the company’s growth pace to slow to 16.7%, possibly reflecting a slowdown in Nvidia’s other product categories besides data centers. Even so, this well-known name in computer technology has developed a penchant for higher estimates.