Stock Pick

  • Afterpay share price hits record high on Apple Pay partnership

    afterpay share price

    Earlier today the Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price continued its meteoric rise and stormed higher again.

    The payments company’s shares rose 3% to hit a record high of $59.64.

    Why is the Afterpay share price rising again?

    There have been a couple of potential catalysts for Afterpay’s share price rise on Thursday.

    The first is a broker note out of Ord Minnett this morning which reveals that its analysts believe the buy now pay later provider’s shares can go higher from here.

    According to the note, the broker has retained its buy rating and almost doubled its price target to $64.70.

    It believes that Afterpay could end the financial year with almost 10 million active customers.

    Apple Pay integration.

    Another possible catalyst is the company’s integration with Apple Pay.

    Although it has been a couple of weeks since the company actually partnered with Apple, it was only today that it emailed customers to advise them of the integration.

    This appears to be good timing by the company ahead of its push into the U.S. bricks and mortar retail market.

    While the Afterpay app is easy enough to use for transactions, it is still no comparison to using Apple Pay, which is effortlessly simple. I feel making the process as easy as possible when entering the offline U.S. market could be key to increasing its adoption and usage.

    Is the Afterpay share price in the buy zone?

    I still believe Afterpay is a buy for investors that are intending on holding its shares for the long time.

    Given the increasing popularity of the payment method, its massive opportunity in a $5 trillion U.S. retail market, and possible expansions into mainland Europe and Asia in the future, I feel Afterpay has the potential to grow enormously over the next decade and become a real force in the payments industry.

    Though, given its high valuation, I think it would be prudent to limit an investment to just a small part of a balanced portfolio.

    Missed out on Afterpay’s gains? Then you won’t want to miss the top shares recommended below…

    5 stocks under $5

    We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Altium or Afterpay when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!” And it’s true.

    And while Altium and Afterpay have had a good run, we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $5 a share!

    Learn More

    *Extreme Opportunities returns as of June 5th 2020

    More reading

    Motley Fool contributor James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of AFTERPAY T FPO. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

    The post Afterpay share price hits record high on Apple Pay partnership appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

    from Motley Fool Australia https://ift.tt/3edyyd4

  • Start your investment journey with a $2,500 investment in these ASX shares

    Making a decision at a crossroads

    If you’re just starting out with investing, you may not have tens of thousands of dollars to invest into the share market.

    But I wouldn’t let that put you off starting your investment journey. This is because even small investments can grow into something meaningful over a long enough timeframe thanks to compounding.

    For example, $2,500 invested in the share market each year for 20 years and earning a 10% return would grow into almost $160,000.

    And if you’re able to increase your level of investments as the years go by and your earnings increase, you could grow your wealth materially more.

    But which shares should you start with? I think you would be best looking long term and at companies which have the potential to grow their earnings strongly.

    Two that tick a lot of boxes for me are listed below. Here’s why I would invest $2,500 into them:

    Nearmap Ltd (ASX: NEA)

    I think this growing aerial imagery technology and location data company could be a great place to invest $2,500. Nearmap provides high resolution aerial imagery, city-scale 3D datasets, and integrated geospatial tools to businesses. It has a massive opportunity in a highly fragmented market and looks well-placed to grow it market share significantly over the next decade thanks to its high quality product offering.

    Pushpay Holdings Group Ltd (ASX: PPH)

    Another ASX share to consider investing these funds into is Pushpay. It is a donor management platform provider which is well-positioned to benefit from the digitisation of giving and the shift to a cashless society. It is aiming to capture a 50% share of the medium to large church market in the future, which represents a US$1 billion opportunity. If it delivers on this target, which I suspect it will, then it should drive strong earnings growth over the next decade.

    And here are more exciting shares which could be stars of the future and great options for that $2,500…

    5 stocks under $5

    We hear it over and over from investors, “I wish I had bought Altium or Afterpay when they were first recommended by The Motley Fool. I’d be sitting on a gold mine!” And it’s true.

    And while Altium and Afterpay have had a good run, we think these 5 other stocks are screaming buys. And you can buy them now for less than $5 a share!

    Learn More

    *Extreme Opportunities returns as of June 5th 2020

    More reading

    James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. owns shares of Nearmap Ltd. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended PUSHPAY FPO NZX. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended Nearmap Ltd. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

    The post Start your investment journey with a $2,500 investment in these ASX shares appeared first on Motley Fool Australia.

    from Motley Fool Australia https://ift.tt/3eolKAs

  • Torpedoed by the Corona Crisis, Can Cruise Lines Recover?

    Torpedoed by the Corona Crisis, Can Cruise Lines Recover?It’s no great secret that cruise line stocks have been some of the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic.From a mid-January high near $52 a share, Carnival Corporation (CCL) stock lost nearly 82% of its value through mid-March! Royal Caribbean (RCL) was about as hard-hit, falling 83% the same time period. And Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH), perceived to be the weakest of the three big publicly-traded cruisers, lost a staggering 87%.More than just victims of consumers unable to cruise because they were stuck at home under stay-at-home orders, or unable to serve patrons because individual state governments had told them to close their doors, cruise lines were actually forbidden to do what they do — cruise — by order of the federal government, and subjected to a blanket “no sail” order from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), instructing them not to leave port before late July.And yet, as state governments across the U.S. began gradually to reopen, investors have begun regaining hope that these cruise lines will in fact resume sailing at some point in the future, even as capital raises by the companies have raised hopes they can remain solvent long enough to wait that long. Thus, since mid-May, observes J.P. Morgan analyst Brandt Montour, “cruise shares are up ~75% vs. the SPX +11%.”Is this a reasonable expectation? And what are the chances that cruise line stocks will go up some more?In Montour’s estimation, the answers to these questions depend on a whole series of factors, chief among them “load factors.” Given the high fixed costs of the cruise business (luxury liners cost a lot of money to build, and then more money to maintain, fuel, and staff), Montour admits that the timing of the CDC lifting its no sail order matters, and the prices cruise lines charge for their tickets matter, and profit margins matter, too — but because it takes a lot of passengers renting a lot of cabins to cover a cruise line’s fixed costs, occupancy rates matter most of all.Currently, cruise lines appear to be betting on a resumption of sailing by late summer (Montour estimates “August/September”) and a return to “near-full occupancy” by 2021. Montour thinks this, too, is a reasonable assumption, given consumers’ demonstrated “surprisingly high risk-tolerance” (see any newspaper headline on summer crowds from the past few weeks) and the apparent “pent-up demand for vacationing … broadly.”Granted, “common sense indicates” that getting back to 100% occupancy rates “will be difficult without a vaccine.” But with more than 100 different coronavirus vaccines now in development, and governments around the world pushing vaccine developers to accelerate their work, the chances look good that something should be available on the vaccine front relatively early next year. And in that case, it’s at least plausible that cruising will resume in 2021, and that occupancy levels could approach 100% as consumers gain more confidence in its effectiveness.Just to be safe, though, Montour is predicting 100% occupancy won’t be reached “across operators” before 2022, and advising investors to “accumulate shares below current levels.” He doesn’t hold out much hope that stock prices will get too much cheaper, however, setting a price target of $20 on Carnival stock (which currently costs $19 and change), $24 price target for Norwegian Cruise (which costs $19.20 now), and $72 stock-price forecast for Royal Caribbean (which currently costs $58).Given these guesstimates, it’s unsurprising that he says J.P. Morgan prefers “RCL and NCLH over CCL.”To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * HSBC Resumes Plans To Cut 35,000 Jobs Postponed By Pandemic * Oracle Sinks Post-Earnings As Cloud Push Drags On * Novartis Scores FDA Ilaris Approval For Rare Type Of Arthritis * KKR-Led Consortium Buys 6% Stake In Vietnam’s Vinhomes For $650 Million

    from Yahoo Finance https://ift.tt/2YMorWc

The Latest

  • Outstanding Shares and Stock Floats

    ·

  • NVDA | Will NVIDIA Get a Boost From New Gaming Laptops? March was a record quarter for digital spending on games.

    ·

  • Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for the trading week beginning May 11th, 2020

    ·

  • Mark Cuban’s Secret Shopper Study Finds That 96% of Dallas Businesses Don’t Comply With Reopening Guidelines. This is going to get bad.

    ·