There are few sectors that have seen such rapid growth as tech in 2020.
Businesses and consumers have increasingly flocked to so-called work-from-home companies during the pandemic. And according to Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of tech-focused firm ARK Invest, “the world has changed for good.”
“When businesses and consumers adopt new technologies that are cheaper, more convenient, faster, more creative in their response, there’s no turning back,” she told Fortune.
Wood, who’s known for her bullishness on Tesla and focus on “disruptive innovation,” suggests the bifurcation between what she calls “old world” tech and “new world” tech has become clear. But investors may want to avoid certain stocks on both sides.
“At either end of the spectrum, I would be careful. I would look at the names that are 40 to 70 times sales and say, ‘Okay, they’re probably going to spend the next few years growing in to that valuation, so I don’t think they’ll be the most productive growth stocks out there,'” Wood argues. But on the flip side, “the coronavirus, I think, has accelerated the move away from the old guard.”
In particular Wood points to names like Cisco, Intel, and Oracle as “the old world.” “You can see the difference between a Webex, which Cisco owns, and Zoom,” Wood argues (she’s partial to Zoom, a stock ARK owns). Those stocks, which she says operate on more “old world legacy database technology,” didn’t perform as well in 2020 (Intel and Cisco were both in the red for the year, down 16.8% and 6.7% respectively). “And I still don’t think they will [perform as well]” this year, predicts Wood.
Even though some of those stocks are “priced accordingly” for their slower growth, Wood says she still thinks investors should steer clear. But that doesn’t mean that every newfangled tech company with rapid growth deserves the astronomical valuations they’re being assigned.
“I would also stay away from stocks that I still think people are trying to understand exactly what they do and how they fit into the new world,” she says.
That includes cloud and cybersecurity names like CrowdStrike and Snowflake, both of which remain unprofitable despite the former trading up a massive 324% in the past year (Snowflake IPO’d in September). “That’s a lot of multiple they’ll have to grow into,” she says. (Wood does actually like CrowdStrike, but she suggests investors keep their position very minimal and look for corrections.)
Instead, Wood says she’s on the hunt to find the “next FAANGs, the next big thing.” She’s eyeing companies in areas like genomics and social commerce, and watching names she deems “underappreciated” in 2021, like Teladoc, Roku—and, of course, Tesla.
