Morgan Stanley has identified 17 stocks that will pay off hugely over the next 3 years even if the bull market ends

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Morgan Stanley has identified 17 stocks that will pay off hugely over the next 3 years even if the bull market ends

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  • Morgan Stanley's equity strategists have been sounding the alarm on the bull market, saying an extended period of volatility and weaker returns may be underway.
  • If that's the case, it increases the importance of stock picking to be invested in parts of the market that stay afloat.
  • Equity strategists across the firm rated companies they believe will deliver the best returns over the next three years.

If "buy and hold" is your strategy, Morgan Stanley has a few stocks you'd want to consider.

Equity analysts across industries recently published a list of quality stocks that are good to hold for a three-year period - through 2021, in this case.

Morgan Stanley's equity strategists have been sounding the alarm on the bull market for a number of months now, warning that an extended bear market may already be underway. If that's truly the case, stock picking will be more important to minimize the damage that's caused by the worst performing parts of the market.

The strategists rated stocks based on their sustainability of competitive advantage, business model, pricing power, cost efficiency, and growth. They didn't simply identify the most undervalued stocks. They also factored in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles to see how companies are running themselves today to be sustainable in the future.

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The list below highlights the top 17 of the 30 stocks they identified, with comments from the analysts who cover the stocks.

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Accenture

Accenture

Ticker: ACN

Market Cap: $105.6 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 9%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 11%

Price Target: $180

Comment: Accenture is a "beneficiary of shift toward digital and cloud adoption," said Brian Essex, an analyst. "Other positive signposts include (1) commentary from CIOs and the channel that digital/cloud projects are growing in size and scope, and (2) data from consulting firms and vendors that services spending is picking up."

Source: Morgan Stanley

Alphabet

Alphabet

Ticker: GOOGL

Market Cap: $105.6 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 18%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 18%

Price Target: $1,200

Comment: "Investments in cloud/YouTube/hardware are likely to weigh on GOOGL's near-term profitability, upward revisions, and share price outperformance," said Brian Nowak. "That said, we feel that the additional capex/R&D is necessary to take advantage of the large greenfield opportunities ahead (Waymo, Verily,etc.). We are fully supportive of these investments over the long term as they should enable GOOGL to expand its ecosystem and fuel its innovation and monetization drivers."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Dollar General

Dollar General

Ticker: DG

Market Cap: $25.14 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 8%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 14%

Price Target: $122

Comment: "Management's key priorities remain (i) profitable sales growth, (ii) unit growth opportunities, (iii) enhancing DG's position as a low-cost operator, and (iv) investing in people," said Vincent Sinisi. "With in-progress investments behind these initiatives and a supportive 2018 setup, we continue to see a clear pathway for solid long-term returns."

Source: Morgan Stanley

First Republic Bank

First Republic Bank

Ticker: FRC

Market Cap: $15.75 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 16%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 13%

Price Target: $199

Comment: "FRC is a high-quality bank that grows much faster than peers without taking undue risk, in our view," said Ken Zerbe. "It has an attractive high net-worth client base, a strong management, and a reputation for excellent customer service. We expect above-peer EPS growth of 14% from 2018e-21e at FRC (vs. peers at 9%), due to strong loan growth and 17% CAGR in wealth management fees, supporting its premium valuation."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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NextEra Energy

NextEra Energy

Ticker: NEE

Market Cap: $75.78 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 4%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 9%

Price Target: $174

Comment: NextEra is "a best-in-class utility coupled with a premier renewable energy business that should benefit from the continued rapid decline in renewable energy," said Stephen Byrd. "NextEra’s Florida Utility business will in our view grow at an above-average rate, and NextEra’s renewable energy development business has generated ~20% levered equity returns for over a decade, driven by barriers to entry in this business."

Source: Morgan Stanley

Phillips Morris International

Phillips Morris International

Ticker: PM

Market Cap: $12.32 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 7%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 9%

Price Target: $111

Comment: "PM is well-positioned to sustain global category leadership," said Matthew Grainger. "PM currently holds ~26% share of the global cigarette market (ex-China) and is positioned for its volume trends and market share to outperform peers, contributing to our ~11% net revenue CAGR in 2018-20E."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Ticker: TMO

Market Cap: $87.12 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 10%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 14%

Price Target: $230

Comment: "Our biannual Pharma and Academic lab surveys consistently indicate TMO gaining share across all product verticals, as well as in services/software/distribution, and TMO has outgrown tools peers by >100bps/year in both pharma and academic end markets," said Steve Beuchaw. "The share gains speak to TMO's ability to offer an integrated end-to-end solution including product bundling and price discounts; TMO has arguably the broadest portfolio of products in tools. We forecast a 5.3% organic growth CAGR in '18-'21."

Source: Morgan Stanley

BlackRock

BlackRock

Ticker: BLK

Market Cap: $86.56 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 9%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 14%

Price Target: $650

Comment: "We expect its broad product range to fuel +5.5% organic growth through 2021 despite secular headwinds for traditional active managers," said Michael Cyprys. "BLK is not immune to industry headwinds, but its industry-low fee rate of ~19 bps and high incremental profit on ETF sales positions it ahead of peers, as we expect fee pressure to continue."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab

Ticker: SCHW

Market Cap: $80.22 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 12%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 20%

Price Target: $63

Comment: "Schwab has been able to leverage its scale and breadth to grow revenues at a 12% CAGR over the past 5 years, which we believe can continue," said Michael Cyprys. "We believe its diversified revenue stream (50% net interest income, 40% asset management, 10% trading commissions) gives SCHW long-term defensible earnings profile that can adapt to changing environments and has defensive qualities in a risk-off environment."

Source: Morgan Stanley

JPMorgan

JPMorgan

Ticker: JPM

Market Cap: $389.48 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 7%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 18%

Price Target: $135

Comment: "Our top pick among the US money center banks: JPM's push into new markets, opportunity to gain share, efficiency improvements, and benefit from deregulation drive our positive long-term view," said Betsy Graseck. "Our estimated 2019 ROE for JPM of 15% is above the peer median of 13%; by 2021 we expect the gap to widen to 18% for JPM vs. 14% for peers by 2021."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Microsoft

Microsoft

Ticker: MSFT

Market Cap: $12.32 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 11%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 16%

Price Target: $130

Comment: "Ramping public cloud adoption + improving margins = framework for a $1 trillion market cap … and beyond," said Keith Weiss. "A public cloud solution portfolio spanning core infrastructure services (e.g. compute, storage), to compelling platform-as-a-service capabilities (e.g. data, identity, analytics, machine learning), and up the stack to the application layer (e.g. productivity apps, front office apps, core financials) differentiates the Microsoft public cloud offering from peers.

However, it is the combination of these Public Cloud assets with pre-existing enterprise assets, including a large existing customer base,expansive direct and indirect distribution channel, over 6 million .Net developers, and a suite of strong on-premise technology that likely drives continuing share gains over the next three years."

Source: Morgan Stanley

Sherwin-Williams

Sherwin-Williams

Ticker: SHW

Market Cap: $35.65 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 11%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 16%

Price Target: $425

Comment: "Sherwin-Williams is likely to continue to grow in excess of a still-strong US architectural paint market, due to its leverage to the professional contractor, aggressive store count expansions, and unique capacity to provide more convenient and holistic service to the largest paint consumers," said Vincent Andrews.

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Amazon

Amazon

Ticker: AMZN

Market Cap: $777.78 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 26%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 57%

Price Target: $1,700

Comment: "Emerging high-margin revenue streams — advertising, subscription, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) — give Amazon a growing "pool" of gross profit dollars to invest more aggressively than ever (in core retail, logistics, B2B, Prime, Echo, healthcare, India, Brazil, etc.) and still deliver better-than-expected profitability," said Brian Nowak.

Source: Morgan Stanley

Marsh & McLennan

Marsh & McLennan

Ticker: MMC

Market Cap: $41.39 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 6%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 11%

Price Target: $90

Comment: "MMC isa global, diversified franchise that can deliver sustainable, double-digit EPS growth," said Kai Pan. "It has leading global franchises in insurance brokerage and consulting. It has a high-quality management team, in our opinion, one that is committed to (1) 13% long-term EPS growth, (2) increasing cash flow, (3) reducing share count,and (4) double-digit dividend growth."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Prologis

Prologis

Ticker: PLD

Market Cap: $48 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 2%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 7%

Price Target: $90

Comment: "PLD's 'last mile' exposure and strong development pipeline should drive peer leading 7% funds-from-operations growth on average over the next few years," said Vikram Malhotra. "Also, we believe PLD's healthy balance sheet and strong operating platform positions them well to be opportunistic if opportunities arise."

Source: Morgan Stanley

Visa

Visa

Ticker: V

Market Cap: $290.38 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 12%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 19%

Price Target: $142

Comment: "One of the best business models we’veseen: We see Visa as a prime beneficiary of consumer spending trends and ongoing secular shifts from cash/check to electronic forms of payment," said James Faucette. "It benefits from network effects as increasing merchant acceptance drive more usage, and vice versa. The cost base is largely fixed, driving declining cost per transaction and steady uplift for operating margins as volume grows."

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Domino's Pizza

Domino's Pizza

Ticker: DPZ

Market Cap: $10.57 billion

Revenue 5-year CAGR (2016-2021 estimates): 13%

EPS 5-year CAGR: 24%

Price Target: $260

Comment: Domino's has the best-in-class same-store sales and unit growth in QSR," said John Glass. "Domino's targets system sales growth (units+SSS) of 8-12% over the next 3-5 years, and recent performance is at the top end of, or exceeding, this range — placing it ahead of global peers. Our work suggests that quick service system sales growth forecasts correlate highly with valuation (on a FCF basis), supporting DPZ's premium valuation."

Source: Morgan Stanley