From the rise in remote working, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, to the AI revolution, technology companies have been some of the best-performing stocks in recent years.
Tech stocks are so popular today because of a range of factors:
- Remote working and digital transformation: The pandemic forced businesses to embrace remote work models, leading to a surge in demand for cloud computing, communication tools, and cybersecurity solutions. This fueled the growth of companies at the forefront of these technologies.
- Increased reliance on technology: From online shopping and entertainment to education and healthcare, our daily lives have become increasingly reliant on technology. This broad-based adoption has benefited a wide range of tech companies, regardless of their specific niche.
- Low interest rates: For much of the post-pandemic period, central banks kept interest rates low, making tech stocks, with their potential for high growth, more attractive compared to traditional investments like bonds.
- Innovation and disruption: The tech sector is constantly evolving, with new advancements emerging all the time. This inherent potential for disruption excites investors, who see opportunities for exponential growth in the right companies.
With companies like Microsoft (up 56.95% in the last year) and Apple (up 22.52 in the last year) continuing to see growth, we highlight the best-performing stocks in the Nasdaq 100 index from the technology sector, ordered by their returns from the last year.
Note: The following list is for information only and does not constitute financial advice. Source: Finviz. Stock data is current as of market close on February 6, 2024.
10: Lam Research Corp (LRCX)
Performance (1 Year) 59.32%
Since 1980, Lam Research has played a key role in contributing to the extraordinary pace of innovation in the semiconductor industry. Lam has a mission to drive semiconductor breakthroughs that define the next generation. Today its market-leading products and services enable customers to build smaller, faster, more powerful, and more power-efficient electronic devices.
Lam is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Fremont, California, with operations around the globe. In 2023 it saw groundbreaking advancements in semiconductor manufacturing to progress in inclusion and diversity, with it reaching an all-time high in January 2024.
9: Adobe Inc (ADBE)
Performance (1 Year) 61.8%
As one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world, Adobe empowers everyone – from individuals and small businesses to government agencies and global brands – to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences.
The company announced it had achieved revenue of US$5.05bn in Q4 2023, which represents 12% year-over-year growth. “Adobe’s strategy, category leadership, ground-breaking innovation, exceptional talent and global customer base position us well for 2024 and beyond,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s Chair and CEO.
8: Datadog Inc (DDOG)
Performance (1 Year) 63.48%
Datadog’s SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management, real-user monitoring, and many other capabilities to provide unified, real-time observability and security.
Datadog is used by organisations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams.
In its Q3 2023 results the company announced a revenue of US$547.5m, representing an increase of 25% year-over-year, and forecast revenue between US$564m and US$568m for Q4.
7: Zscaler Inc (ZS)
Performance (1 Year) 71.87%
Zscaler has achieved incredible growth since its founding in 2007, and today exists to create a world in which the exchange of information is always secure and seamless. Leveraging the largest security cloud on the planet, it has more than 7,500 customers, including 30% of the Forbes Global 2000.
In its Q1 2024 financial results the company announced that its revenue had grown 40% year-over-year to US$496.7m. “We are enabling enterprises to move forward with their key transformative initiatives - Zero Trust and AI - which is driving demand for our Zero Trust Exchange,” said Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO of Zscaler.
6: Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)
Performance (1 Year) 96.16%
Founded in 1969 as a Silicon Valley start-up, the AMD journey began with dozens of employees who were passionate about creating leading-edge semiconductor products. AMD has grown into a global company setting the standard for modern computing.
For the full year 2023, the company reported revenue of US$22.7bn. “Demand for our high-performance data centre product portfolio continues to accelerate, positioning us well to deliver strong annual growth in what is an incredibly exciting time as AI re-shapes virtually every part of the computing market,” said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.
5: MongoDB Inc (MDB)
Performance (1 Year) 99.97%
Headquartered in New York, MongoDB’s mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. MongoDB has tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries.
The company announced total revenue of US$432.9m in its last quarter, up 30% year-over-year.
“MongoDB has clearly established itself as an indispensable part of the tech stack of any organisation focused on building durable competitive differentiation through software development,” said Dev Ittycheria, President and Chief Executive Officer of MongoDB.
4: Broadcom Inc (AVGO)
Performance (1 Year) 107.07%
Broadcom, a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is a global infrastructure technology leader built on more than 60 years of innovation, collaboration and engineering excellence.
Through the combination of industry leaders Broadcom, LSI, Broadcom Corporation, Brocade, CA Technologies, Symantec's enterprise security business and through its recent acquisition of VMware, the company has the size, scope and engineering talent to lead the industry into the future. The company saw Revenue of US$8.8bn for Q3 2023, up 5% from the prior year.
3: Palo Alto Networks Inc (PANW)
Performance (1 Year) 113.12%
Global cybersecurity leader Palo Alto Networks continually delivers innovation to enable secure digital transformation, even as the pace of change is accelerating.
Its best-in-class cybersecurity platforms and services are backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art automation.
In its most recent Q1 2024 announcement the company said its revenue grew 20% year over year to US$1.9bn. “An unprecedented level of attacks is fueling strong demand in the cybersecurity market,” said Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “We continue to execute on platformisation as customers recognise the benefits we can provide in simplifying security architectures and driving better security outcomes.”
2: Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (CRWD)
Performance (1 Year) 165.82%
CrowdStrike was founded in 2011 to reinvent security for the cloud era. Realising that the nature of cybersecurity problems had changed but the solutions had not, the company built its CrowdStrike Falcon platform to detect threats and stop breaches.
With its Falcon platform, Crowdstrike created the first multi-tenant, cloud native, intelligent security solution capable of protecting workloads across on-premise, virtualised and cloud-based environments running on a variety of endpoints. The company announced total revenue of $786m in the quarter ending October 2023, a 35% increase, compared to $580.9 million one year earlier.
“Our single platform architecture and unique data advantage unites security and IT teams in solving cybersecurity’s mission-critical challenges, driving increased win rates and record pipeline,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s President, CEO and Co-founder. “Customers increasingly trust the AI-native Falcon XDR platform as their cybersecurity consolidator of choice.”
1: Nvidia Corp (NVDA)
Performance (1 Year) 222.35%
Since its founding in 1993, Nvidia has been a pioneer in accelerated computing. The company’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined computer graphics, ignited the era of modern AI and is fueling industrial digitalisation across markets.
Today the company’s work in AI and digital twins is transforming the world’s largest industries and profoundly impacting society. Services from Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, Spotify, Tencent and 40,000 other companies are built and run on Nvidia AI technologies, while Nvidia technologies are behind recent breakthroughs in large language models used to build generative AI, the most important AI models today.
In its Q3 2023 report for the 2024 financial year Nvidia announced that its total revenue was up 206% year-on-year to US$18.12bn, particularly driven by strong data centre growth.
“Our strong growth reflects the broad industry platform transition from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of Nvidia.
“Large language model startups, consumer internet companies and global cloud service providers were the first movers, and the next waves are starting to build. Nations and regional CSPs are investing in AI clouds to serve local demand, enterprise software companies are adding AI copilots and assistants to their platforms, and enterprises are creating custom AI to automate the world’s largest industries.
“Nvidia GPUs, CPUs, networking, AI foundry services and Nvidia AI Enterprise software are all growth engines in full throttle. The era of generative AI is taking off,” he said.
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