After digesting great news regarding a potential COVID-19 pandemic vaccine, Canadian growth stocks have taken a significant hit. Traders have been quickly cashing in their big 2020 growth stock gains. Instead, capital has been moving to value/cyclical stocks, as the markets start anticipating a recovery out of the crisis.
Buy Canadian growth stocks on the dips
I certainly support owning some great cyclical stocks right now. Yet, I would look at the recent crash in Canadian growth stocks as a great long-term buying opportunity. Regardless of COVID-19 or not, many of these stocks have strong competitive positions, disruptive technologies/services, and/or very strong secular tailwinds supporting their growth. With this in mind, here are two of my favourite Canadian growth stocks to buy on this temporary dip.
This stock wins from the pandemic and after the pandemic
Unlike many of its tech peers, Lightspeed POS (TSX:LSPD)(NYSE:LSPD) stock has held up relatively well since Monday. Fortunately, the company has found a way to prosper in the pandemic. Yet it should do even better during a recovery out of the pandemic. Lightspeed has been a useful tool to help retail and hospitality merchants continue running their businesses through the pandemic.
The rush to Lightspeed’s cloud-based, omni-channel sales and payments systems over the pandemic will likely translate into strong stable sales growth in a recovery. As restauranteurs and retailers begin to see a light to normalcy (i.e., no more lockdowns), Lightspeed should enjoy a stabilization of customer churn and overall retail spending.
Lightspeed reported very strong results in its 2021 second quarter. Gross transaction volumes grew 51% year over year. Likewise, customer locations expanded 40% to 80,000 year over year. Lightspeed agreed to acquire Shopkeep, which only further expands its scale and geographic reach.
This is one Canadian growth stock that is not only doing well now, but it has years of growth ahead. Regardless of what happens, it’s a win-win over the long run. For me, that sounds like a pretty good investment thesis.
This Canadian growth stock will be flying high for a long time
Cargojet (TSX:CJT) is another growth stock Canadians ought to pick up while it’s trading near a one-month low. Traders are now running their money to highly speculative recovery stocks like airline and cruise lines. While there is hope for a recovery, nobody knows when a vaccine will be certified as safe and then also fully distributed. That could still take time. So, while we wait, I would much rather own Cargojet than any sort of speculation.
Cargojet dominates Canada’s overnight freight delivery business — so much so that in 2019, Amazon invested a 10% stake in the company to secure its next-day delivery capacity in Canada.
COVID-19 has strongly benefitted this Canadian growth stock. It has enjoyed a strong surge in e-commerce and healthcare delivery demand. Likewise, it was able to start a number of new routes that took over from international passenger carriers’ regular cargo capacity.
The company recently reported strong year-over-year revenue and EBITDA growth of 38% and 100%, respectively. Cargojet generated $59 million in free cash flow, which it used to invest in new growth opportunities and reduce leverage (now 2.1 times debt to EBITDAR).
The Christmas holidays are coming, and e-commerce shopping is going be even more important this year. Cargojet will undoubtedly play an important role as “Santa’s reindeer” in 2020. Beyond this, e-commerce and same-day delivery are going to continue to grow for years in Canada. All this makes Cargojet a perfect Canadian growth stock to buy at a discount today!
