Here are 5 stocks you need to consider
Many new investors don?t have the funds to spend $300 or more on 1 share of stock. In fact, the average American has less than $1,000 in savings. If you are interested in investing on a budget, you might consider companies that are more affordable per share. There are many high-quality Tech companies that are trading for under $50. I started investing with just $100 over 13 years ago and you can start building a portfolio on any budget. Here are 5 Tech Stocks Under $50 Each.
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Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA)
Zynga is a popular online gaming company based in San Francisco with around 2,100 employees. Some of their popular brands include FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Draw Something, and Words with Friends. These games are used by hundreds of millions of players and they are seeing a big uptick during the coronavirus as people stay home and play games. Just recently, on May 6th, they released their quarterly earnings and they had their best quarter ever! Zynga ended up raising their full-year 2020 revenue and bookings guidance. For Q1 of 2020, Zynga did $404 Million in revenue which was up 52% year over year. User pay revenue was up a whopping 72% and Zynga reports having $1.43 Billion of cash on hand. These are great numbers and show the impressive growth that they are experiencing now. Their cash position will help them navigate the ongoing coronavirus, invest in new games, and continue hiring software developers. Zynga stock (ZNGA) is currently trading around $7.77 per share.
Slack (NYSE: WORK)
Slack is a communications and collaboration app that is used by over 12 million people worldwide. I?ve used Slack for over four years now and I?ve seen firsthand how popular it is. It makes it easy to communicate with your team and other employees that you need to work with. The software is easy to use and has connections to popular apps so it can integrate with other software tools that you use. Even though Slack has over 100,000 paid customers, they are still relatively small and have tons of market share left to acquire. Slack is based in San Francisco, and they have around 2,300 employees on LinkedIn. They have a freemium model, which means new customers can use a free version first. This creates a flywheel effect for people to test out the Slack software before committing for a full company roll out. Customers might test out Slack with one group, like marketing, before spending funds on a full rollout for everyone else. This creates new revenue for Slack that might be years out as someone could use the free version for a while before jumping into a paid plan. Slack stock trades under the symbol (WORK), and it is currently trading for around $31 per share.
Cloudflare Inc (NYSE: NET)
Cloudflare has been named in the most innovative companies by several leading publications. They create software for web performance, infrastructure, and network security. Cloudflare is based in San Francisco and has around 1,300 employees. They are basically a security and internet company that helps websites improve for customers and end-users. Cloudflare is a smaller Tech company so this provides opportunities to investors who might consider them for the long term. In Q1 of 2020, Cloudflare did $91 million in revenue, which was an increase of 48% year over year. They have over 2 million free and paying customers and 13% of the Fortune 1000 use Cloudflare. They are competing with every large tech company so I?m curious if they can maintain this significant growth each quarter. Cloudflare (NET) is trading for around $26 per share.
Ping Identity (NYSE: PING)
Ping Identity or just Ping, is a cybersecurity stock in the identity and access management space (IAM). They provide identity software and security solutions for large enterprises through a Zero Trust model. They work with both cloud and on-premise environments which makes them popular with very large enterprises that have hybrid cloud environments. Over half of the Fortune 100 choose Ping for their identity products and all 12 of the largest U.S. banks rely on Ping for identity needs.
Ping Identity is based in Denver, Colorado and they have around 1,000 employees. They are still a relatively small tech company and they are competing with larger companies like Okta and Microsoft in the IAM space. Ping is not the leader in this space but they are in the top 5 according to reports from Gartner research. Why do I like Ping? The cybersecurity space has tons of room to grow and there is room for multiple players in the IAM space. Ping also has superb reviews on Glassdoor so the employees like working there and they approve of the management team. I am a fan of PING as an investment for the next 3?5 years.
Fastly (NYSE: FSLY)
Fastly is a cloud technology company with around 650 employees. According to their website, they ?empower your developers, connect with your customers, and grow your business with today?s leading edge cloud platform.? What does this mean? Customers expect the most from products and services that they use online or on mobile. They want speedy web pages and apps to work properly. Fastly is one of the cloud companies providing resources to help satisfy the rising customer demands. We rely on technology for everything and companies are investing money to improve the user or customer experience.
Fastly is still a small technology company and the stock is priced at a reasonable entry point for many investors. Ever since its IPO in the spring of 2019, the stock price was around $20?23 per share. During the coronavirus pandemic, it took a dip but has been on a tear since then. Fastly recently announced their Q2 2020 results and the stock market took notice. Their quarter growth was at 38% year-over-year and Fastly raised their 2020 guidance. Basically, they are killing it and adding customers in record speed. I have a long term position in Fastly and I plan to own the stock for many years. You should definitely watch FSLY this year.
Update: Fastly stock has increased significantly and is now trading at $80 a share on July 27, 2020.
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Investing Tips:
When you invest in the stock market, ask yourself the question, ?Will this company be around in 5?10 years?? If you are buying stock in companies, plan to hold the stock for 3?5 years. Very few people see significant returns in short time periods. A strong portfolio has a variety of industries and sectors of the economy and typically 15 or more different stocks. Good luck out there in the market and please stay safe during this crisis.
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Disclosure: I am a personal investor and writer. This article is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not to be considered professional financial advice. I currently own stock in all of the companies listed in the article: ZNGA, WORK, NET, PING, and FSLY
