In this piece, we will take a look at the top internet stocks to buy according to Cantor Fitzgerald.

The rise of the internet and its ubiquity in our daily lives is perhaps the greatest technological innovation of the 21st century. The transformation of the internet into what can very well be described as a utility was unthinkable even during the peak of the dotcom era; however, the firms that started back then or those that leveraged it to mold their business model are among the largest and most valuable companies in the world right now.

The clearest example of this comes through the share price of the world’s largest eCommerce retailer. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, this stock ranks 1st on our list of Beyond the Tech Giants: 35 Non-Tech AI Opportunities. Its market capitalization currently sits at a cool $1.96 trillion, and while it doesn’t make it the most valuable company in the world, the firm’s unique ability in being able to merge the high volume and total addressable market (TAM) components of the eCommerce and logistics industry with the high growth, high margins offered by cloud computing has introduced a lot of stability into its shares. So much so that its peak to trough share price fall this year wiped off 19% of its value, while Wall Street’s favorite AI GPU designer marked a much sharper 27% drop. In absolute terms, this internet stock has delivered 2,077x in returns since its IPO, which is a cool way to turn a dollar into two grand.

Yet, it’s still not the only internet stock that’s transformed Wall Street and the world. Two other dominant internet stocks are the world’s largest social media company founded by Mark Zuckerberg and the world’s largest search engine provider set up by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Since they started trading, these two firms’ shares are up by 1,275% and 5,608%, respectively while their founders are among the richest individuals in the world.

This is the power of the internet. It has spurred new industries, created billionaires, and even has its currencies through cryptocurrencies. Safe to say, the internet is here to stay, whether it’s for posting memes or gaining access to healthcare from remote locations. But even though it’s been around for nearly three decades now, like the broader industry, the internet continues to evolve and open new frontiers.

While it’s lost some steam as the world dealt with the dual crises of the pandemic and high interest rate, the advent of fifth generation (5G) internet technologies is believed to expand the use of the internet across a diverse range of industrial and consumer applications. As per McKinsey, the Internet of Things (IoT) industry could create a value ecosystem that is maximally worth $12.5 trillion by 2030 end. Within this, factory usage of IoT accounts for more than a quarter of the value pie or $3.3 trillion. Application wise, the research firm believes that business to business or B2B applications hold the greatest potential for IoT value creation as they account for 65% of its value creation estimate.

Of course, the industrial sector is not the only one that’s being disrupted by the internet. Another key area where it is making its impact is banking. One of the oldest industries in the world, banks stand neck in neck with governments when it comes to bureaucratic processes, high overhead costs, slow decision making, and slow response times. This has proven to be quite a disadvantage for banks, as according to additional research conducted by McKinsey, internet companies like Google and Tencent are already offering banking related services where they can. Additionally, banks are also being challenged by financial technology firms, with the number of such companies growing from 25 in 2017 to 274 in September 2022 for a combined market value of $1 trillion. This shift to digital banking has also impacted traditional bank valuations, with bank stocks trading at a 70% discount in 2022. The research firm believes that banks that are successfully able to transition to a digitized model can unlock $20 trillion in benefits.

These benefits have already manifested. For instance, by adding language processing software to its business, one bank was able to remove 360,000 lawyer hours. As a whole, it is estimated that through digital banking, commercial banks can improve their margins by as much as 25 percent. For the banking industry, these are life or death improvements as during the 15 years that ended in 2022, bank margins had dropped by 25 percent and are on track for another 20 percent decrease over the next decade.

Finally, due to its ubiquity, internet stocks cannot be classified in one category. They range from social media firms to eCommerce companies, streaming services, and cloud providers. All these firms have their unique valuation drivers, which means that consumer exposure and heavy enterprise spending often prove to be the few broad based catalysts that apply to all firms. On this front, Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm that managed $13.2 billion in assets as of December 2023 has started to focus on some top internet stocks.

Driving its strategy is the belief that “despite strong performance over the last 18 months, valuations in internet names are fairly reasonable and should benefit from the expectation for upcoming rate cuts, tempered by decelerating top-line growth and as benefits from widespread cost-cutting fade.” So let’s take a look at Cantor’s top internet stocks.

Our Methodology

To compile our list of Cantor Fitzgerald’s top internet stock picks, we ranked the firm’s 22 internet stocks by their share price upside for Cantor’s share price target for all the stocks except for stock number 17. This is because the share price target for this stock wasn’t available, and as a substitute, the average analyst share price target was used to calculate the upside/downside percentage.

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).

22. Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2024: 63

Share Price Target Upside: 20%

Cantor’s Rating: Underweight

Cantor’s Share Price Target: $94

Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB) is a travel accommodation provider that is one of the largest companies of its kind. However, the market hasn’t been kind to the shares lately, as they are down by 18.9% over the past year and 12.7% year to date. This has been fueled by several concerns, most notable of which are Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB)’s rising costs and its inability to match these with revenue growth. For instance, between 2022 and 2023, the firm’s revenue grew by 17.8% to sit at $9.9 billion at year end. However, during the same period, its operating expenses grew by 34%, meaning that Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB)’s operating income dropped by 19.7% to $1.5 billion. This means that moving forward, the firm has to focus on growth initiatives if it is to resume its share price growth. Naturally, Cantor is also underweight on the stock, with its $94 share price target suggesting that the shares are trading at a 23% premium to Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB)’s peers.

Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB)’s management is aware of the need to drive growth, and here’s what it had to say during the Q2 2024 earnings call:

“And to answer your question about expansion markets, maybe a framework I can give to think about how we want accelerate growth, listen, we want to be growing a lot fast than we are. We want to be growing in healthy double-digit growth – double-digit growth and I think we can. And the way we’re thinking about accelerating growth is through short-term, medium- term and long-term. Short-term is really optimizing our core business. It’s really around affordability, about having high quality stays and just conversion rate increases. Long term is really about new products and services. So, the question you asked about international is interesting because it’s kind of like a medium term horizon, like one to three years.

And to frame this, Airbnb is in 220 countries and regions. We’re one of the most global companies in the world on the Internet, 220 countries and regions. We operate nearly in every country in the world. But there’s only really five markets where we’re penetrating. And those markers are the US, UK, France, Canada and Australia. And you’d think like, well, if there was one company in the world that would truly be like have a lot of international penetration it’d be a global travel network, right? A website where you want to travel, use one platform to travel around the world. So there’s a number of countries. Just to give you a couple of examples of our some big expansion markets, Germany and Brazil we’ve seen a lot of progress. Those are huge travel markets and the biggest travel markets in the world.”

21. Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2024: 57

Share Price Target Upside: -14%

Cantor’s Rating: Neutral

Cantor’s Share Price Target: $47

Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG) is a real estate company that works with agents, renters, home buyers, and others. This means that the stock thrives when rates are low and economic activity is robust enough to support home buying activity. It also means that Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG) is exposed to broader trends that might affect this industry, as has been the case through a historic settlement by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to home buyers. This could impact Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG)’s business model as it also facilitates purchases and sales as the deal covers the commissions that agents receive. The stock has suffered in an era of high rates and inflation, which has depressed home buying activity. However, this hasn’t stopped Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG) from adapting to new initiatives such as the Flex marketplace for agents that does not require them to pay upfront for leads and instead charges a hefty commission (depending on geography) if a sale is closed. This has proven to be quite popular, as Flex revenue grew by 45% annually (as per Piper Sandler) in Q2.

Here’s what Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZG)’s management had to say about Flex during the earnings call:

“Our Premier Agent partners represent some of the best, most professional agents in real estate who we believe are poised to take share in the evolution the industry is experiencing. Recall that not every real estate agent is a Zillow Premier Agent partner. In fact, since 2015, we’ve shrunk our active partner base by roughly 60%, while our Premier Agent revenue has grown by more than 2.5 times over the same timeframe. We’ve oriented Premier Agent around some of the best agent teams, those that we believe provide superior customer service, understand the industry and their local market, have a proven ability to scale and make the most money to invest alongside us. The top 20% of agent teams handle 80% of transactions and nearly four in five of those Premier Agent partners are in that top tier.”