By Tim Hanson
January 15, 2010
If you wanted to add some growth to your portfolio, you might consider the Vanguard Growth Equity fund. After all, it's an "aggressive" fund that seeks "long-term capital appreciation." And yes, its top holdings do seem like they'd be good ways to get growth:
Stock
Weight Within Fund
Baxter International
3.2%
Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO)
3.1%
PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP)
2.6%
Walgreen
2.6%
Berkshire Hathaway
2.5%
Progressive
2.4%
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)
2.4%
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)
2.3%
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL)
2.3%
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)
2.1%
Data from Vanguard.
(My Comment: Only good quality stocks)
But now let's take a look at just how much growth analysts actually expect from these companies:
Stock
Analyst 5-Year Growth Estimate
Baxter International
11.5%
Cisco Systems
11.25%
PepsiCo
10.75%
Walgreen
14.22%
Berkshire Hathaway
5%
Progressive
6.53%
21.34%
Johnson & Johnson
7.54%
Oracle
12.19%
Apple
18.16%
Average
11.85%
Data from Yahoo! Finance.
Now, we all know that securities analysts are notoriously off in their projections, but let's assume that when we average together dozens of forecasts for these high-profile stocks, we at least end up in the ballpark. Assuming that, is 11.85% really the magnitude of growth you'd like to get out of your aggressive growth stocks?
If you're happy with 11.85%, then you can stop reading and stick with your high-profile "growth" stocks. But if you're looking for more, I recommend you read on.
Still with me?
The recipe for truly high growth has a handful of necessary ingredients. They are:
- A small company
- A wide market opportunity
- Meaningful macroeconomic tailwinds.
Let me introduce you to one that does
Now consider something like the pharmaceutical industry in India. Today, on average, Indians spend $10 per person per year on drugs. Americans, on the other spend, more than $750! That means the Indian pharmaceutical market needs to grow some 7,400% in order to be as big as the U.S. market is today.
This won't happen next year, or even over the next 10 years. Furthermore, because of discrepancies in purchasing power, the Indian pharmaceutical market may never reach the size the U.S. market is today. But let's assume it takes 25 years for the Indian market to reach half the size of the U.S. market. That would mean industry tailwinds of 15.6% annual growth ... for 25 years!
As for who benefits, think about a company like Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (NYSE: RDY). Although this Indian company is earning most of its revenue today in Europe and the United States selling low-cost generics, it's positioned extremely well to benefit from sales in the Indian market as it grows. It's a domestic company, so it knows the market well, and it specializes in marketing the low-cost drugs that are likely to sell best in India.
This, in other words, is what a real growth opportunity looks like. Dr. Reddy's is a small company with a wide market opportunity that stands to benefit from meaningful macroeconomic tailwinds.
Looking for more?
At Motley Fool Global Gains, we believe that real growth opportunities are available over and over again in the world's emerging markets, simply because these markets are creating so many meaningful economic tailwinds these days.
http://www.fool.com/investing/international/2010/01/15/this-is-what-a-real-growth-opportunity-looks-like.aspx