The Dow Jones Industrial Average or DJIA Index is one of the most popular indexes in the world. It has served as an indicator of the health of the U.S. economy and sentiment surrounding Wall Street for more than a century.
In case you have dry powder available to invest in stocks right now, you can consider these extremely popular Dow Jones stocks today.
Salesforce.com
One of the top-performing stocks on Wall Street, Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) remains a top pick for growth investors. Salesforce.com is a market leader in the customer relationship management space and its suite of products is used by enterprises to manage digital marketing campaigns, analyze service issues as well as for customer analytics, among others. IDC in fact forecasts Salesforce.com to account for 20% of global CRM revenue.
Salesforce.com has increased top-line at an annual rate of 29% in the past decade and continues to expand revenue organically. Alternatively, the company has also focused on big-ticket acquisitions including Tableau and Slack to gain traction in other markets.
The company’s CEO, Mark Benioff expects Salesforce sales to touch $50 billion by fiscal 2026, up from $21.3 billion in fiscal 2021, indicating annual growth rates of 20% in the next four years.
Visa Inc.
A fintech giant, valued at a market cap of $523 billion, Visa (NYSE: V) has been a massive wealth creator for investors. In the last 10 years, Visa stock is up 1,210%, easily surpassing the S&P 500 gains of 380% in this period.
Visa is also part of Warren Buffett’s portfolio as the company manages to outperform analyst forecasts consistently. Its sales have risen from $18.35 billion in fiscal 2017 to $21.85 billion in fiscal 2020 (ended in September). Wall Street now forecasts sales to rise by 8.2% to $23.6 billion in 2021 and by 19.5% to $28.24 billion in 2022. Comparatively, its earnings per share might grow at an annual rate of 18.8% in the next five years.
Visa is a payment processor and one of the most recognized brands in the world. The company has issued 3.6 billion credit and debit cards in more than 200 countries. In the last four quarters, Visa has facilitated over $9 trillion in total payments.
It continues to issue additional cards as well as its merchant base, both of which are key drivers of revenue growth. In the last two years, Visa’s merchant base has increased by 34%. Visa is well placed to benefit from the reopening of global economies and the company has forecast its total addressable market at a whopping $200 trillion.
Verizon
While Visa and Salesforce are part of a rapidly growing market, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) operates in a mature sector. However, this allows the company to generate steady and predictable cash flows and pay a tasty dividend to investors.
Verizon is also part of Warren Buffett’s portfolio and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) increased its stake in this telecom giant by 8.3% in 2021. The upcoming transition towards 5G remains a key driver of revenue growth for Verizon that also pays investors a dividend yield of 4.5%.
The company is eying growth in the NaaS or network-as-a-service vertical too. This subscription service will enable the integration of multiple applications that include virtual reality, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. Verizon has spent $45 billion in the first six months of 2021 to benefit from the NaaS opportunity which has increased total debt to $152 billion.
In the first two quarters of 2021, Verizon sales were up 7% year over year at $66.6 billion while its net income grew 24% to $11.3 billion. Verizon has managed to increase its dividends each year since 2007 and this trend is likely to continue given the company’s cash flow and earnings expansion.
Related: Three Dividend Paying Giants of the S&P 500
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