Investing for big-time growth doesn’t have to be risky.
Investors who want to turn $100,000 into $1 million will need patience. Even if we assume a window of 30 years to 10x your portfolio, that would require an annualized growth rate of 8.33%. Still, plenty of growth stocks have beaten that result over the past 30 years.
Growing your nest egg by 10 times or more over the long term doesn’t necessarily require risky investments, as there are predictable ways to invest for growth. Here are four of them.
1. Go with a high-quality real estate investment trust
This hasn’t been a great year for real estate investment trusts (REITs), but over long periods of time, they have been some of the best investments in the stock market. The problem is, some REITs are inherently riskier than others.
One of the most dependable REITs is Realty Income (O -0.98%), which has delivered a 13.8% annualized rate of return over the past 30 years with dividends reinvested. If you had invested $100,000 in Oct. 1993 and reinvested your dividends, you would have a holding worth nearly $4.3 million today.
Realty Income offers a degree of safety because of its size and diversity. The company owns and leases more than 13,100 commercial properties across 85 different industries. It focuses on quality businesses as tenants, so when it does borrow money to add to its portfolio, it is considered a better risk, with an A- (upper medium grade) rating from Standard & Poor’s. That means, even in a period of higher interest rates, it is able to borrow at better rates than many of its competitors.
It pays dividends monthly, which keeps investors loyal, and it has boosted those payouts 122 times, including for 104 consecutive quarters.
Through the first six months of 2023, Realty Income reported revenue of $1.9 billion, up 21.3% year over year, and funds from operations (FFO) of $1.37 million, up 13.3%. Adjusted FFO grew by around 13.6% to $1.32 million.
2. Find a growth company with a big moat
If you had bought $100,000 worth of Alphabet (GOOG -0.21%) stock at its IPO in 2004, you would have a stake worth more than $5.5 million today, because the company had an annualized return rate of more than 23% since. The company still has a 20% rate of annual return over the past five years because it is so dominant in digital advertising. People’s habits have become so ingrained that “Googling it” has become a generic term for looking something up online.
While some smaller companies have struggled this year and the S&P 500 Index is up 13%, Alphabet’s shares are up more than 58% — about fully recovered from their decline during 2022’s tech sector crash. The company continually invests in growth and so far, that has paid off.
In the second quarter, revenue from the company’s search, YouTube, and cloud divisions drove another strong quarter. Alphabet reported revenue of $74.6 billion, up 6% year over year, and net income of $18.4 billion, up 14.7%, while earnings per share (EPS) were up 19% to $1.44.
3. Find a growth company that’s ramping up its growth cycle
It’s a little riskier to invest in growth companies, but finding up-and-coming businesses can pay off more in the long run. A good example of that is Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX -0.75%).
The biotech company already has a well-established dominance in cystic fibrosis therapies, but what makes it a growth stock is its ability to branch out into other potentially lucrative areas, including CRISPR gene-editing therapies and non-opioid pain medications.
Vertex’s shares have climbed by more than 29% so far this year and that’s not a new phenomenon. If you had invested $100,000 in this stock 25 years ago and held on, your stake would’ve compounded be worth more than $3.2 million now.
The company has a strong share of the cystic fibrosis market, thanks to therapies such as Kaylydeco, Orkambi, Symdeko, and Trikafta — the only drugs of their kind on the market for the disease. Investors are also excited about the potential of exa-cel, a gene-editing therapy that Vertex collaborated on with Crispr Therapeutics, and that has the potential to provide a functional cure for two genetic blood disorders: transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to decide whether to approve exa-cel for sickle cell disease by Dec. 8, and for beta-thalassemia by March 30, 2024.
Vertex also has had strong phase 2 trial results for its non-opioid painkiller candidate VX-548 as a treatment for acute pain following abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) and bunionectomy surgeries. The drug is also in a phase 2 trial to treat neuropathic pain. The ongoing opioid crisis highlights the need for non-opioid options to treat acute and chronic pain.
In the second quarter, Vertex reported revenue of $2.49 billion, up 14% year over year, and management raised its full-year guidance to a range of $9.7 billion to $9.8 billion, compared to its $8.75 billion in 2022 revenue. The company also reported second-quarter net income of $915.7 million, up 13% year over year, and EPS of $3.52, up 12.4%.
4. Ride a can’t-miss trend
Year to date, shares of pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly (LLY -2.71%) and Novo Nordisk (NVO -2.89%) have jumped by around 68% and 49%, respectively, because of the sales of their diabetes and weight-loss therapies, most notably the GLP-1 class of drugs. The one-two combination of increasing obesity worldwide and an aging population in many countries will drive demand for effective diabetes and weight-loss drugs.
Novo Nordisk, which has seen a big uptick in sales for its GLP-1 drugs — Wegovy, used for weight loss, and Ozempic, used to treat diabetes — has raised its annual revenue forecast three times this year. Now, the company said it expects its sales to grow by between 32% and 33% in 2023, and for its earnings before interest and taxes to climb by 40% to 46%.
Lilly, whose GLP-1 drug Mounjaro is leading a sales surge, has raised its yearly guidance twice this year. In the second quarter, the company said that it had sales of $8.3 billion, up 28% year over year, and EPS of $1.95, up 86%. The company now says it expects full-year revenue of between $33.4 billion and $33.9 billion, and it also boosted yearly EPS to between $9.70 and $9.90.
That’s just the beginning. Both companies have large pipelines, and their rising profits will allow them to fund potential moonshots as well as purchase profitable therapies that will only secure more growth.