In this piece, we will take a look at the ten best cloud stocks to buy according to short sellers. Despite the fact that short seller indicator is one of the most useful indicators, it isn’t widely used by investors.
The cloud computing market is one of the fastest growing in the technology industry as the ubiquity of the internet allows business to digitally outsource their functions to reduce investment costs and access specialized services. Estimates show that the cloud computing market was worth $480 billion in 2022, and despite its heft, it is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% to be worth a whopping $2.2 trillion by the end of 2032. The three segments of the cloud computing industry are infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS).
READ ALSO 13 Best Tech Stocks to Buy According to Short Sellers and 8 Best EV Stocks According to Short Seller Sentiment
This market, like other mega technology industries, is dominated by mega cap technology companies. As per research from Gartner, the global IaaS market is dominated by five services as of 2023 end. These are AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Aliyun, and Huawei Cloud. Their market shares are 39%, 23%, 8.2%, 7.9%, and 4.3%, respectively, with all other firms commanding 17.6% of the total market. In terms of revenue, AWS raked in an impressive $54.6 billion in revenue, while the others brought in $32.1 billion, $11.4 billion, $11.1 billion, and $5.9 billion, respectively. AWS’ dominance in the industry is clear as it brought in more than twice the revenue of all other firms that follow Huawei since their cumulative revenue was $24.6 billion.
Apart from the biggest players, whose valuation metrics are different due to their mature and diverse business models, valuing cloud computing stocks is different from how you’d value other companies. For instance, most firms are valued through their price to earnings (P/E) ratio. This measures the premium that investors are willing to pay for a firm’s earnings, but the ratio becomes useless when we try it to value cloud computing stocks. This is because of the industry’s obsession with growth, and its need for high margins, meaning that cloud cloud computing stocks, and particularly SaaS stocks, reinvest large portions of their revenue back into growth.
So much so that one of the most troubled SaaS companies these days has been aggressively investing in growth despite its shares being down 39.65% year to date. This firm ranks 6th on our list of Ray Dalio’s Top 10 Growth Stock Picks with 30+% Revenue Growth, with its second quarter product revenue of $868.8 million marking a 28.9% annual growth. However, this growth clearly hasn’t been enough, as the stock tumbled by 14.7% after the latest earnings report. During the same period, this firm’s marketing and research and development expenses sat at $838.2 million, or 96% of its revenue. This is a classic illustration of the cloud computing industry, and one that requires different valuation metrics than the P/E ratio as these firms are not profitable most of the time.
The two key metrics for valuing SaaS stocks in particular are the EV/Revenue and the Rule of 40. A firm’s enterprise value is its market value plus net debt, and when divided by revenue, the resulting ratio measures the premium that a buyer would be willing to pay for a firm over its ability to generate revenue. The Rule of 40 is simpler, as it simply states that the sum of a SaaS firm’s revenue growth rate and profit margin should exceed 40. While this rule is simply a benchmark and not all inclusive of SaaS performance, it does have some key implications. For instance, it implies that if a firm is growing its revenue at or faster than 40%, then it can be unprofitable.
On the flip side, if growth slows down, to say 10%, then it must be highly profitable with margins of at least 30% to show that the lower growth is accompanied by the benefits of the beefy margins that software companies enjoy. McKinsey also substitutes the profit margin with the free cash flow (FCF) margin to further broaden this rule’s scope. A firm’s FCF simply eliminates the impact of interest, taxes, and capital expenditure on the net income. As per its analysis, the top Rule of 40 SaaS companies are investor favorites. This is because McKinsey’s data shows that in a sample size of 100 SaaS companies, those with the 25 highest Rule of 40 scores had median EV/Revenue multiples of 22. This was nearly 22x the overall sample’s 11x, and nearly 3x the bottom 25 firms’ median EV/Revenue multiples of 8. In other words, investors are typically willing to pay a higher premium over sales for SaaS firms that have either robust revenue growth, superior cost control, or a mix of both.
Finally, while EV/Revenue and Rule of 40 measure the financial validity and stature of these firms, their stock performance is also tightly linked to the economy and monetary policy. A low interest regime means that businesses can spend more money, which is beneficial for SaaS and cloud computing firms, both. On Wall Street, August has marked a paradigm shift after Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirmed that his organization was satisfied with macroeconomic indicators to cut interest rates. This has also impacted valuations, as the median EV/Sales ratio for the top companies, i.e. Rule of 40 firms with a growth rate higher than 30%, sat at 13.3x as of the latest market close. This is the second highest for the year, with the last high being in May when it sat at 16.3x. This was before a brief rate gloom took over Wall Street in July which saw the flagship S&P index lose 8.5% between mid July and early August.
Any discussion of SaaS stocks would be incomplete without a brief discussion of the implications of artificial intelligence. According to hedge fund Coatue Management, SaaS valuations as measured by forward sales are at a historic low right now through a median of 5.5x. This comes with lower growth expectations, as just 1% of SaaS firms are now seeing a median forward growth estimate of 30%+. As for the business model, SaaS firms are seeing a shift from a traditional seat based model that drove revenue from the number of users that were using the services to a consumption driven model. Their lower growth expectations are also somewhat driven by the belief that AI could allow companies to cost effectively create their own code and thereby reduce their reliance on SaaS and cloud computing providers.
With these details in mind, let’s take a look at the best cloud computing stocks to buy according to short sellers.
A closeup of a laboratory technician monitoring a computer for the Cloudbreak platform.
Our Methodology
To make our list of the best cloud stocks to buy according to short sellers, we ranked the holdings of First Trust’s cloud ETF by the percentage of shares outstanding that were sold short. Then, the stocks with the lowest percentage were selected.
We also mentioned the number of hedge funds that had bought these stocks during the same filing period. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
10. Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors in Q2 2024: 107
Short Interest as % of Shares Outstanding: 1.18%
Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) is a productivity focused cloud computing services provider. Its products include image editing, video editing, document reading and analysis, and marketing content creation. This means that Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) stands to benefit from the key opportunity of hefty subscription revenue all the while keeping its costs low due to the software centered nature of is business. Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s shares are the late bloomer in the AI world, as they sank by a painful 30% between February and May as Wall Street remained wary of the firm’s ability to generate revenue from artificial intelligence. Since then, the stock has gained 28% after Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) introduced a slew of AI services across its product portfolio. These include its AI image generation tool called Firefly and Acrobat AI Assistant which works with its document reader. Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s brand image and market presence provide it with key competitive advantages, and the firm has to maintain its market share by staying ahead in the innovation curve.
Polen Capital mentioned Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“With Adobe, in some ways, we see it as a microcosm of the market’s “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to categorizing AI winners and losers. In the early part of last year, Adobe came under pressure with a perception that generative AI (GenAI) would represent a material headwind to their suite of creative offerings. In short order, the company introduced its GenAI offering, Firefly, which shifted the narrative to Adobe as a beneficiary with a real opportunity to monetize GenAI in the near term. Earlier this year, that narrative was again challenged as the company reported a slight slowdown in revenue growth. Results in the most recent quarter were robust as the company raised its full-year forecast across a number of key metrics and showcased better-than-expected results.”
9. Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors in Q2 2024: 18
Short Interest as % of Shares Outstanding: 0.99%
Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) is a charity, healthcare, and education focused cloud computing company whose products enable users to manage their grants, tuition, finances, fundraisers, and other associated operating activities. Like other SaaS firms, its business depends on revenue growth and cost control, with the former being particularly important as Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)’s trailing twelve month revenue is $1.1 billion. While Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) is profitable, the firm is currently shaking up its business model. When opposed to enterprise and business centered cloud computing peers, Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)’s revenue is more sensitive to prices due to the the nature of its customers. However, this hasn’t stopped the firm from upgrading its contract model. Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) now requires its customers to use a three year contract with three to five year renewals and annual price hikes. The previous model was a three year contract with annual renewals and no price increase. While the new model stands to grow Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)’s revenue and stretch its recurring revenue, whether its customers choose to stick with it is unknown. Given the specialty nature of its business, it is possible that Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) might retain customers.
Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)’s management shared details for this contract model during the Q2 2024 earnings call:
“We started this program late Q1 of last year. So, we have come up on a good chunk of those initial contracts, where customers may have chosen a one-year versus a multi-year agreement that’s what we were keeping an eye on. The good news is that our renewal rates have fared very well. Overall, our gross dollar retention number, which we now disclose publicly, you can see held steady at 90% for the company. It’s pulled down a little bit by EVERFI, but overall, we held constant at 90% gross dollar renewal year-over-year, which is very positive considering all the efforts on the contractual front.”
