GOLDMAN SACHS: Explosive sales growth is the only thing keeping corporate profits afloat - so buy these 12 stocks to take advantage

Reuters / Kyodo

• While Goldman Sachs expects earnings growth to push stocks higher in 2019, it's cautious about what it sees as a lack of margin upside.
• The firm recommends buying stocks offering high revenue growth to counteract this trend, since they're the most likely to keep seeing strong earnings expansion.
• Goldman identifies the 12 stocks is says will offer the best sales growth throughout the rest of 2019.

Profit growth has been the foremost driver of stock gains throughout the 10-year bull market. But what's an investor to do as corporate earnings slow?

It's an important question, and one that needs an answer amid forecasts that margins - which currently sit at a record high - have nowhere to go but down.

The answer is simple to Goldman Sachs: If traders can't be guaranteed robust margin expansion, their only hope is to seek share appreciation through companies offering explosive top-line growth.

"Mounting pressures from wage inflation and other input costs will pressure margins, making further expansion from currently all-time high margins unlikely," David Kostin, Goldman's chief US equity strategist, wrote in a client note. "As a result, growth in EPS will be driven entirely by top-line sales."

But recognizing that is the easy part. It's decidedly more difficult to actually identify these companies. Luckily for hungry investors out there, Goldman has constructed a basket of stocks offering outsized revenue growth.

The firm finds that the group has beaten the benchmark S&P 500 by 400 basis points so far this year. Since margins were near all-time highs for the entire period, the basket's success is compelling proof that investors should be seeking high-sales-growth companies.

Without further ado, here are the 12 stocks Goldman says will offer the highest revenue expansion this year.

Get the latest Goldman Sachs stock price here.