The S&P 500 is off to a horrible start in 2022, falling more than 16% just over four months into the year. And the worst thing investors can do right about now is "obsess" about their investments and constantly check on stock prices. That's a surefire way to panic and make a knee-jerk decision that you regret later on.
A much safer strategy is to find some good deals, buy them, and leave those investments alone. A company with good fundamentals that has a bright future will do well over the long haul, regardless of what the markets do in the short term. A couple of growth stocks that are trading near their 52-week lows and can be tempting options to just buy and forget about include Seagen (SGEN) and Alphabet (GOOG -1.96%) (GOOGL -1.97%).
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Seagen
Shares of healthcare company Seagen have fallen more than 20% since the start of the year. Although that's not disastrous, given how badly the markets have been performing, it's been enough of a drop to push Seagen down to a new 52-week low recently.
The good news is that Seagen's business isn't in bad shape. On the contrary, it can be an attractive pickup for long-term investors. It has some promising cancer medications in its portfolio, including Adcetris, which treats Hodgkin's lymphoma. Seagen anticipates that Adcetris will bring in up to $755 million in revenue this year, accounting for nearly half of the company's total product revenue.
But Seagen's business is broader than just one drug, with bladder cancer drug Padcev and breast cancer medicine Tukysa projected to bring in up to $455 million and $335 million this year, respectively. Cervical cancer drug Tivdak is new, with the Food and Drug Administration approving it in September. And it could end up being a blockbuster, generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue for Seagen down the road; the company hasn't forecasted its contribution to the top line this year, but through the first three months of 2022, it generated over $11 million in sales.
Overall, Seagen forecasts that net product sales could top more than $1.5 billion and increase by 12% this year. While that isn't an astronomical growth rate, the company has trials ongoing to expand the indications for its existing products and potentially lead to more growth opportunities in the future. In total, management says that it has more than 17 pipeline programs that it is advancing in 2022.
Another positive for long-term investors is that while Seagen remains unprofitable today, the company's business is well funded. As of the end of March, the company had more than $1.9 billion in cash and short-term investments on its books. Last year, the company burned through $500 million in cash over the course of its day-to-day operating activities.
And so as long as Seagen's cash burn doesn't significantly worsen this year (and there's no reason to expect that it will), the business doesn't need to depend on frequent share offerings (i.e., dilution) to fund its growth. That can make the stock a relatively safe growth investment to hang on to for the long haul, and one that investors won't have to worry about.
2. Alphabet
Alphabet's stock has been nosediving this year, and the release of its latest earnings report last month didn't help matters either. The tech company's first-quarter performance fell short of analyst expectations, with both the top and bottom lines showing some weakness. In particular, advertising from YouTube was soft, with ad sales from the video platform coming in at $6.87 billion for the first three months of the year versus Wall Street estimates of $7.51 billion.
However, there's still plenty of growth ahead for the business. According to Technavio, online ad spending is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of just under 11% until 2026. And in what researchers call a fragmented market, where few players (including Alphabet) dominate, the company stands to benefit from a lot of that long-term growth. An underwhelming performance in Alphabet's most recent quarterly earnings doesn't change the long-term trajectory of its business, which remains strong.
With shares of Alphabet down 20% so far this year, now could be an optimal time to buy the stock. Its price-to-earnings ratio of 21 looks like a steal for a business that is still growing revenue at a rate of 23%. Over the past couple of years, it hasn't been uncommon to see the stock trade at more than 30 times its trailing profits.
