We recently published a list of 10 Best Long Term Growth Stocks to Buy According to Billionaires. In this article, we are going to take a look at where AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) stands against other best long term growth stocks to buy according to billionaires.
As per Barclays, the US administration announced numerous executive orders with reforms associated with world trade, immigration, and global geopolitics, resulting in elevated levels of uncertainty and volatility, with markets witnessing a range of policy changes. The firm’s research analysts opine that higher uncertainty comes at a cost to global growth. In the US, there has been a decline in consumer confidence, while personal spending remains weak, and GDP forecasts declined sharply, says the firm.
What’s Ahead for US Economy?
S&P Global believes that the Trump administration’s shifting policy mix continues to result in a faster decline in growth in 2025. While the firm’s full-year growth rate remains unchanged at 1.9% (mainly because of higher base effects from a strong end to 2024), it expects a downshift in growth to 1.6% by Q4. It expects unemployment to drift higher, peaking at 4.6% by midyear 2026, with the public sector likely to limit the payroll expansion. This contrasts with strong contributions to job growth over the past 2 years.
S&P Global expects inflation to remain closer to 3.0% in 2025 as tariffs result in higher prices along the domestic supply chain and for end consumers. Therefore, the company anticipates one 25-basis-point federal funds rate cut for 2025, closing the year at the 4.00%-4.25% range.
READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In.
US Economy to Grow in 2025, Says Russell Investments
For 2025, Russell Investments expects a soft landing for the US economy. It assumes that the new administration will ease the more aggressive stances on tariffs and immigration. As per the firm, the US economy is projected to grow at a trend-like pace of 2.0% in 2025. The Trump administration’s policies exhibit a delicate balancing act. The firm believes that tax reforms and deregulation can help stimulate growth, mainly in domestic and cyclical sectors. Its working assumption is focused on the new administration not aggressively pursuing policies that result in inflation risk.
While the tariffs and immigration controls are likely to be implemented, the firm opines that the extent is expected to be constrained by the inflation outlook. Overall, Russell Investments expects the policy mix to support business confidence, which can fuel a resurgence in capital markets and offer favorable tailwinds for private assets.
Our Methodology
To list the 10 Best Long Term Growth Stocks to Buy According to Billionaires, we used a screener and Insider Monkey’s exclusive database of billionaire stock holdings to shortlist the companies that have exhibited at least ~20% revenue growth over the past 5 years. For the stocks with the same number of billionaire holdings, we have used the number of hedge fund investors as a secondary metric to rank the stocks, as of Q4 2024.
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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a mobile device, showing an advertiser reaching out to a consumer via a software-based platform.
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP)
5-Year Revenue Growth: ~36.4%
Number of Billionaire Investors: 17
Number of Hedge Funds: 95
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) is engaged in building a software-based platform for advertisers in a bid to enhance the marketing and monetization of their content. Citi analysts upheld a “Buy” rating with a price objective of $600.00 on the company’s shares after its recent interest in acquiring TikTok’s assets outside of China. On April 3, 2025, AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) confirmed that it has indicated interest to the President of the United States to explore a purchase of TikTok in all markets outside of China. While the indication of interest is preliminary, and there can be no assurance that a transaction will proceed, Citi analysts expect numerous strategic advantages if it proceeds.
The addition of TikTok could potentially accelerate AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP)’s expansion into non-gaming advertising categories. Also, the access to TikTok’s data can improve the company’s proprietary machine learning model, AXON. Owning the advertising inventory can also reduce any AdTech discount, potentially enhancing its valuation multiples. For Q1 2025, AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) expects advertising revenue in the range of $1,030 million – $1,050 million and total revenue of between $1,355 million – $1,385 million. Total adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $855 million – $885 million.
Sands Capital, an investment management company, released its Q4 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) is one of the leading providers of advertising solutions for mobile game developers. The business aggregates advertising inventory for mobile gaming, offering a suite of products to track advertising performance to optimize distribution and monetization. The company has a dominant position in mobile ad mediation, as well as a strong position on the demand side. Since the launch of Axon 2.0, its artificial intelligence-based advertising model, AppLovin has begun fine-tuning its large-language model for ecommerce, receiving strong early feedback from ecommerce advertisers. In our view, this provides an opportunity for the business to expand outside its core gaming vertical to ecommerce and aggregate demand from nongaming applications. While this opportunity is early, the unconstrained nature of performance advertising provides upside to both the magnitude and duration of growth that AppLovin could sustain if successful.”
Overall, APP ranks 3rd on our list of best long term growth stocks to buy according to billionaires. While we acknowledge the potential of APP as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than APP but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
