It’s a new year and many investors are looking for the best stocks to fuel their portfolio growth in 2025 and beyond. The annual flip of the calendar can prompt investors to reassess their holdings, looking for weeds to trim while seeding new positions. 2023 and 2024 were phenomenal years for tech stocks due to the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) tools. However, s S&P 500 and Nasdaq near record highs, the best opportunities may be drying up in this category.
So where can hypergrowth investors turn for bargains? my answer: Coupang (NYSE: CPNG). The South Korean e-commerce platform remains undervalued and is the perfect growth stock for investors to buy and hold for the long term. Here’s why.
Coupang is the leading e-commerce platform in South Korea. With a vertically integrated delivery network similar Amazonthe company is able to quickly deliver items to customers, and this has led the company to steadily increase its share of the country’s retail market. In fact, you can argue that it offers a better delivery experience than Amazon. Coupang integrates with its own food delivery network, delivering groceries within hours and delivering items by 7am the next day if ordered before midnight. You can even return items by simply leaving them on your front porch.
You can get all these benefits for a subscription fee of about $5.75 per month — incredible value and the reason why 22.5 million people are active Coupang users in a country of 51.8 million. Despite currency headwinds from the strength of the US dollar, Coupang’s revenue has more than doubled since 2021, with $28.9 billion in sales over the past 12 months.
Now the company is expanding its platform to a new market: Taiwan. He has replicated the manual used in South Korea with amazing results so far. Coupang’s evolving offerings segment — which includes international e-commerce sales — grew revenue 347% year-over-year in the third quarter to $975 million. The expansion into Taiwan should help Coupang maintain its impressive growth trajectory through the end of this decade.
While Coupang’s revenue growth is impressive, it might not even be the best part of this company. That honor undoubtedly belongs to the margin increase. Coupang is targeting at least 10% adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) over the long term.
In the last few quarters, its profitability has stagnated, but this is due to the large investments made in launching and growing the Taiwan market. Despite this, Coupang posted $124 million in operating income in the first nine months of 2024, a significant improvement from the $1.1 billion operating loss it reported in the same period three years ago.
