5 Leading Growth Stocks to Buy in 2021 and Beyond

Investors who can identify “big picture” trends and have the patience to wait for those trends to take hold can be rewarded with great long-term returns. We often get caught up in the day-to-day headlines we see on the news, but it’s often a yearslong view that benefits investors the most.

These trends are happening right before us, and there are still years of growth ahead for the companies that drive these changes. Here are five investing themes and the growth stocks well-equipped to benefit from them.

1. Continued strength in streaming

Consumers are steadily moving away from traditional cable television and adopting streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max. Technology platform Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) is a leader in providing the “operating system” many streaming services run on, whether through streaming sticks or the software television makers use to power their products.

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Roku’s business has shifted from depending on hardware sales to a platform business that generates revenue from ads and subscriptions from viewers using their Roku TVs. The company’s user base has expanded from 22 million active accounts in Q2 2018 to 55 million in its most recent quarter, Q2 2021.

As Roku gains more customers, it has more leverage with streaming partners and advertisers; its platform becomes the “gateway” to the streaming audience. Roku doesn’t care whether you watch Netflix, or Hulu, only that you do it on a Roku TV. The company has had disputes with streaming companies such as Comcast, Alphabet‘s Google, and AT&T, but these have largely been settled (all but Google) with services resuming on Roku; the audience on Roku TVs has become too large to pass up.

Roku is actively pursuing expansion in Brazil and the UK. Moving into the years ahead, investors will want to monitor the company’s international growth efforts as it works to pick up more global users.

2. Connecting the world

The last decade’s improvements in connective technology such as 4G and 5G have led to an ability for companies to better communicate with their customers. Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) operates a cloud-based customer engagement platform that gives developers the ability to custom build user-experiences for their business including customer chat, reminders, text alerts, and more.

Twilio had more than 240,000 active customers as of its second quarter, and the company boasted a 135% dollar-based net expansion rate, meaning those customers spent 35% more with the company during the second quarter than they did in the same period last year. This is a clear sign Twilio’s services bring a lot of value to its users’ operations.

The pandemic has pushed consumers further into a digital lifestyle than ever before, and businesses are searching for new methods to engage customers, and grab their attention. Twilio’s “building block” technologies are giving them the tools to do this. The company is expected to grow revenue 52%…