16 Stocks With The Highest Long-Term Sales Growth Rate

Longtime investors know the stock market is forward-looking. That means a stock’s share price is more a reflection of what investors collectively think the company will do in the future than what it did in the past or what it's doing in the future.

The forward-looking nature of the stock market makes sense if you consider why people buy shares of stock in the first place. People don’t typically buy a stock and hope the stock price remains the same. They're hoping the share price goes up because they're anticipating good things from the company’s future.

Growth stocks like Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Netflix, Inc. NFLX have led the market higher throughout much of the past decade. They haven’t always been the most profitable stocks, but their massive returns have come due to investors expectations of their long-term revenue growth.

Amazon and Netflix are just now starting to convert their large revenue growth to earnings, but investors that have waited to this point to buy the stocks have missed out on huge gains.

Sales Growth Stocks

Here are the 16 S&P 500 stocks with the biggest revenue growth over the past five years, according to Finviz:

1. Diamondback Energy Inc FANG, 59.9% growth.
2. Broadcom Inc AVGO, 52.6% growth.
3. Nektar Therapeutics NKTR, 51.6% growth.
4. Facebook, Inc. FB, 48.0% growth.
5. Allergan plc AGN, 43.4% growth.
6. Arista Networks Inc ANET, 42.9% growth.
7. Centene Corp CNC, 40.8% growth.
8. Charter Communications Inc CHTR, 39.9% growth.
9. Incyte Corporation INCY, 39.6% growth.
10. Twitter Inc TWTR, 35.5% growth.
11. Kraft Heinz Co KHC, 33.3% growth.
12. ABIOMED, Inc. ABMD, 33.2% growth.
13. IHS Markit Ltd INFO, 30.4% growth.
14. Netflix, 29.3% growth.
15. Lennar Corporation LEN, 28.2% growth.
16. salesforce.com, inc. CRM, 26.7% growth.

Benzinga’s Take

As with any other single metric for evaluating a stock, there are caveats to high revenue growth. Some companies boost revenue by mergers and acquisitions, which may not be as sustainable as organic revenue growth.

In addition, high-growth stocks like Uber Technologies Inc UBER and Tesla Inc TSLA have struggled in the market because they have failed to demonstrate a clear path to convert their revenue to profits in the long-term.

Do you agree with this take? Email feedback@benzinga.com with your thoughts.

Related Links:

15 Stocks Projected To Have The Biggest 5-Year EPS Declines

14 Stocks With The Highest Long-Term Projected Earnings Growth Rates