These 3 Stocks Tripled Your Money Over The Past Year
Many investors generally see stocks tripling as a long-term goal. But some stocks can also triple within a single year. Let's examine three tech stocks which tripled investors' investments over the past year, and whether or not they still have room to run.
Image source: Getty Images.
AMD
If you had bought shares of AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) when the stock dipped below $2 per share in February, you would have more than tripled your initial investment in just nine months. That's because the chipmaker staged a remarkable turnaround over the past year on the strength of its EESC (Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom) business, which was bolstered by robust sales of its semi-custom SoC for PS4s and Xbox Ones. Those sales are expected to keep rising on console upgrades like the PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, Xbox One S, and Xbox Scorpio.
In the second quarter this year, AMD posted its first quarter of annual revenue growth since 2014. It followed up that 9% growth with 23% growth in the third quarter, and anticipates 6% sales growth for the full year. AMD returned toquarterly GAAP profitability during the second quarter, and non-GAAP profitability during the third quarter.
AMD is also pushing back against Nvidia in the low-end "VR ready" GPU market with the Polaris-based RX 480, and plans to target the high-end market with its next-gen Vega GPUs in the near future. Although AMD remains a distant underdog to Intel in the CPU market, it plans to counter the market leader with its upcoming Zen CPUs.
Oclaro
Oclaro (NASDAQ: OCLR) is a manufacturer of optical components, modules, and subsystems for the service provider, enterprise, and data center markets. If you had bought shares of Oclaro last October when it hovered around $2, you would have quadrupled your initial investment.
Oclaro directly benefits from the rising bandwidth needs of streaming video, cloud computing, application virtualization, and other data-intensive applications. That rising demand boosted its revenue by 55% annually last quarter, compared to 52% growth in the previous quarter and a 2% decline in the prior-year quarter. Most of that growth was fueled by growth in its "100G and beyond" portfolio of high-speed solutions, where sales rose roughly 20% annually for the fifth straight quarter.
On the bottom line, Oclaro's non-GAAP net income rose from a net loss of $1.6 million to net income of $20 million between the first quarters of 2015 and 2016. It also reported GAAP net income of $3.4 million during the quarter, versus a loss of $3.5 million a year ago. Analysts expect that growth to continue, with revenue and non-GAAP earnings expect to respectively rise 44% and206% this year.
Weibo (NASDAQ: WB), commonly referred to as "China's Twitter (NYSE: TWTR)," has more than tripled in value since last October. That explosive growth can beattributed to its rapid growth in monthly active users (MAUs), which grew 33% annually to 282 million last quarter, compared to 36% growth in the prior-year quarter.The company -- which is owned by online media giant Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) -- has posted triple and double-digit sales growth in every quarter since its IPO in April 2014, and analysts expect its sales to rise 33% this year, compared to 43% growth in 2015.
Those numbers are enormous when compared to Twitter's anemic 3% year-over-year growth inMAUs and projected sales growth of15% this year. Weibo is also profitable by both non-GAAP and GAAP metrics, while Twitter is only profitable on a non-GAAP basis. Between the second quarters of 2015 and 2016, Weibo's GAAP net income rose from $4.2 million to $25.9 million, while its non-GAAP net income surged from $10.9 million to $35.5 million. Analysts expect its non-GAAP net income to more than double this year.
Weibo's advertising and marketing revenue rose 45% annually last quarter, fueled by ad buys from small and medium sized businesses nearly doubling. It offers display ads, interest-based ad campaigns, event-based ad campaigns, and promoted feeds. Weibo's new live streaming platform, which allows viewers to buy virtual gifts from the company for their favorite broadcasters, is also boosting its revenue growth.
The key takeaway
Investors should always remember that past performance doesn't guarantee future returns. However, AMD is still in turnaround mode, while Oclaro and Weibo still seem to be firing on all cylinders. Therefore, I believe that these stocks could still have room to run, despite having more than tripled investors' cash over the past year.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia and Twitter. The Motley Fool recommends Intel, Sina, and Weibo. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.