There are bargains to be had, even in a year when the market averages have shot higher. You might be surprised to find that even some household names are still largely ignored by mainstream investors. Sonos (SONO 0.74%) and Nextdoor (KIND) are two names that aren't exactly pinging most market mavens' radars.
You might know the two consumer-facing companies, but did you know that they command market caps of $1.8 million or less? These are cash-rich companies where the enterprise values are even lower. Let's take a closer look at these two stocks that I think have bright futures and can trounce the market in the coming years.
1. Sonos
Sonos is a pioneer in the home audio market. It was the first company to offer a wireless multiroom speaker system, streaming seamlessly though an entire home. Despite competing against three most of the most valuable companies in the country putting out cheap and often subsidized smart speaker systems, audiophiles continue to pay up for the quality and reliability that Sonos delivers.
It's not just surviving. With its arsenal of more than 3,300 U.S. patents and applications, Sonos is outright thriving. It has delivered 17 consecutive years of double-digit household growth, ending fiscal 2022 with 14 million homes on its platform. It also isn't a surprise that it has come through with 17 straight years of positive revenue growth.
Image source: Getty Images.
This year has been challenging. The slowdown in housing market activity, recessionary fears, and the rising costs of financing big-ticket purchases are weighing on growth.
Sonos laid off 7% of its employees in June. Revenue has declined 6% through the first nine months of fiscal 2023, but it did surprise analysts by turning marginally positive in its latest quarter. Some long streaks of success will end, but Sonos remains very profitable on an adjusted basis.
Sonos trades for just 15 times the depressed adjusted profit of $0.91 a share that analysts see the audio pioneer posting in fiscal 2023. The multiple drops to less than 14 if we go with the cash-rich company's enterprise value instead. The near-term outlook isn't great, but the stock is cheap, and it continues to raise the bar with its product line that is in a perpetual state of innovative rollouts.
2. Nextdoor
A deeper value with promising long-term growth prospects is Nextdoor. You probably know about the hyperlocal online community where users living in more than 310,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries can discuss local concerns and share service referrals. It was serving 41.6 million weekly active users in its latest quarter, a 13% increase over the past year.
As an ad-supported platform, it's easy to see why Nextdoor has had recent revenue growth challenges. It posted back-to-back quarters of declining revenue before -- like Sonos -- surprising analysts in a good way with a return to top-line growth in this month's latest quarterly update.
Unlike Sonos, Nextdoor isn't profitable. It's expected to stay in the red for a couple more years. But here's where the deep value comes into play.
Nextdoor is one of the many broken debutantes that went public in 2021 as a special purpose acquisition company. That's SPAC for short, and you probably made a lot of money if you were short most of the SPAC deals from that time.
Nextdoor traded as high as $18.59 on its first day of trading, but it's trading 88% below that short-lived peak. Thankfully, Nextdoor is flush with $551.6 in cash and marketable securities it still has from the late-2021 offering. With its otherwise clear balance sheet, Nextdoor's market cap of $815 million gets whittled all the way down to an enterprise value of $333 million once you back out its net cash position.
Operating losses continue to widen at Nextdoor, but time is on its side to turn that around, given its rich balance sheet. It has trounced revenue expectations for three consecutive quarters, and that's before the online ad market truly bounces back. The future is brighter than the rocky past of Nextdoor as a publicly traded company. Inevitably, the stock chart will live up to its K-I-N-D ticker symbol.
