Wedbush names five stocks that could benefit the most as the economy reopens.
Next year could be another strong year for tech stocks as the economy starts to grow again with the distribution of a COVID vaccine, according to analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe at Wedbush.
While they acknowledge that some tech stocks have already become highly valued -- indeed, the number of downgrades of tech stocks on valuation concerns hasrisen dramaticallyin recent weeks -- the two view this as a “re-rating paradigm” as tech investors hunt for growth.
With a vaccine rolling out and some form of normalization expected to return by the spring or summer, the two are most positive on Uber (UBER), Lyft (LYFT), Tesla (TSLA) , Cerence (CRNC) and Nuance (NUAN) , the latter based on the potential for larger health-care deals occurring.
The two have been bullish on tech stocks since March, arguing that a first phase favored cloud/consumer services such as Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Disney (DIS) ; cybersecurity plays such as Zcaler (ZS), Crowdstrike (CRWD) and Okta (OKTA), and working-from-home stocks such as Zoom Video (ZM), Docusign (DOCU) and Slack (WORK).
Now they say we’re entering a second phase as the economic rebound supports the “fundamental and growth trajectories of well-positioned tech stocks.”
That points to favoring working-from-home stocks, FAANG names and cloud stocks for at least the next six to 12 months, they say, with a fundamental growth driver remaining especially strong around cloud and cybersecurity names as a result of the massive SolarWinds (SWI) hack.
Roughly 35% of workloads are now on the cloud but that number is projected to hit 55% by 2022, according to Ives and Backe.
Finally, the strongest tech plays on an economic recovery are likely to be Uber and Lyft as a return to the office and travel in 2021 should improve both their businesses dramatically and result in these stocks moving much higher in 2021.