In this article, we discuss the 5 best long-term stocks to buy now. If you want to read our detailed analysis of these stocks, go directly to the 11 Best Long-Term Stocks To Buy Now.
5. T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 100
T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS) recently announced that it would be partnering with Walmart, one the largest retailers in the US in terms of physical stores, to enhance the presence of the company. As part of the deal, the products of the carrier will be offered at more than 2,300 Walmart stores in the country as well as the Walmart website. The deal is important because it more than doubles the footprint of the carrier on national retailers.
Citi analyst Michael Rollins has a Buy rating on T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS) stock with a price target of $167. In a recent investor note, Rollins said the company had a multi-year opportunity to grow service revenue and expand margins.
Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Greenwich-based investment firm Viking Global is a leading shareholder in T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS) with 7.5 million shares worth more than $1 billion.
4. Sea Limited (NYSE:SE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 104
Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) is a Singapore-based technology company with interests in a wide array of businesses that include digital entertainment, ecommerce, and fintech. In short, the firm can navigate short-term fluctuations at the market through a tried and tested business model. Citi analyst Alicia Yap has a Buy rating on the stock and recently raised the price target to $424 from $335, seeing upside in the shares on growth of fintech services of the firm.
In early September, Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) had announced that it planned to raise more than $6 billion through an equity offering to fund business expansion projects. The offering consisted of 11 million shares of the company that traded in the US.
At the end of the second quarter of 2021, 104 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $12.2 billion in Sea Limited (NYSE:SE), up from 98 the preceding quarter worth $10.4 billion.
In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Hayden Capital, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“Sea Ltd (SE): When I wrote our Q4 2019 letter about Shopee launching a Brazilian business, it seemed very few investors or competitors knew or cared.
A year ago, I wrote: “This is the first test for the ecommerce marketplace outside of its Southeast Asia home base. Will the platform’s fun and addicting features overcome a lack of local knowledge and presence? It’s hard to predict consumer behavior and how accepting users will be to a platform – especially one that’s a foreign culture and 10,000 miles away. The only way to know is to experiment and watch the results closely.
Empirically though, it seems that what consumers find entertaining in Asia, generally translates well to Brazil (and Shopee really is as much an entertainment platform, as an ecommerce one).
For example, just look at the top 10 free apps in Brazil. Two are utility messaging apps, so we’ll ignore those (WhatsApp and
Facebook Messenger). But among the remaining eight apps, they’re all entertainment based and overwhelmingly Asian. Four are from China (Kwai, TikTok, VStatus, TikTok Lite), two from Singapore (Free Fire and Shopee, both Sea Ltd apps), and one from the US (Instagram). The commonality is that all these apps are experts at creating addictive habits, as evidenced by their personalized recommendations, avg usage time, number of logins per day per user, etc.” (LINK)
I distinctly remember having conversations with several Brazilian hedge funds as recently as last summer who were investors in Sea Ltd. When the topic of Brazil came up, many of them didn’t even know Shopee was operating in their own backyard!
Part of this stems from the fact that Shopee..”[read the entire letter here]
3. Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 108
Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the companies that are poised to benefit from the incredible growth in the cloud industry over the next few years. The company markets cloud computing solutions to enterprise clients. The stock has returned more than 35% to investors year-to-date. The firm recently signed an agreement with DocuSign, an electronic signature expert, to automate the contract process between businesses using artificial intelligence.
On November 1, investment advisory Deutsche Bank initiated coverage of Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stock with a Buy rating and a price target of $360, underlining that the market was underappreciating the long-term opportunity the stock offered in office applications.
Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Washington-based investment firm Fisher Asset Management is a leading shareholder in Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) with 13.4 million shares worth more than $3.2 billion.
In its Q1 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“We added to our software-as-a-service (SaaS) exposure with the initiation of SaaS leader salesforce.com, which develops software for customer relationship management (we added Workday, which enterprise resource planning applications, last quarter). Saleforce.com is well-positioned in the most attractive end markets in software and will benefit from secular drivers such as remote work and the digital transformation. Salesforce.com is a sustainability leader as well, with a commitment to carbon-neutral cloud, toward which it has set a goal of 100% renewable energy for global operations by fiscal year 2022. The company has a strong focus on equality, in terms of equal rights, pay, education and opportunity. As a data company it has been leading on workforce disclosures and seeks to have 50% of its U.S. workforce made up of underrepresented groups by 2024.”
2. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 156
Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) recently announced that it would be accelerating a self-imposed timeline for net zero carbon emissions at the firm to 2040 from 2050, using the Sustainability Innovation Lab of the firm to offer customers new digital tools. The payments company has also been positioning itself for the coming years with careful investments in blockchain and crypto. It recently announced that any company that uses the payment network of the firm would soon be able to trade in crypto.
In addition to a vision for the long-term growth of the firm, Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) also had solid fundamentals. It recently beat market estimates on earnings per share and revenue for the third quarter by $0.18 and $50 million respectively.
Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Virginia-based investment firm Akre Capital Management is a leading shareholder in Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) with 5.8 million shares worth more than $2.1 billion.
In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Bretton Fund, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE:MA) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“While consumers resumed much of their spending by summer, what and how they used their Visas and Mastercards changed. For obvious reasons, people shifted to contactless payments—one of the Covid-era changes we think is permanent—and replaced travel purchases with online shopping and food delivery. Consumers spent more on their debit cards and less on their credit cards; Visa and Mastercard make more per transaction on the latter. They also make more on cross-border transactions that come mostly from international travel, which ground to a halt early in the pandemic. Visa’s and Mastercard’s earnings per share fell by 7% and 16%, respectively, compared to their usual mid-teens growth. We’re not too worried, and we think they’ll catch up nicely in the post-vaccine world. Visa’s stock returned 17.1% and Mastercard’s 20.2%.”
1. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 162
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) is another payments stock with several long-term growth catalysts. It is the most famous payments stock among hedge funds. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are both bullish on the stock despite recent reports of a government probe into the dealing of the firm with other payments companies like Square AND PayPal. The firm recently hiked the quarterly dividend by 17% to $0.375 per share.
Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) recently posted earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter, reporting earnings per share of $1.62, beating estimates by $0.08. The revenue over the period was $6.5 billion, up 28% year-on-year.
At the end of the second quarter of 2021, 162 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $27 billion in Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), down from 164 in the preceding quarter worth $26 billion.
In its Q1 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“To make room for these new names with more attractive outlooks related to the reopening, we sold out of companies where the thesis is not playing out at the pace we expected including Visa.”
You can also take a peek at 10 Stocks Reddit’s WallStreetBets is Buying in July 2021 and Top Robinhood Stocks Popular on Reddit.
