3 Unstoppable Growth Stocks to Buy Before 2025

Stock market volatility will come and go, but what makes a growth stock truly unstoppable is the strength of the underlying business. Whether a stock is rising or falling in the short term, if you patiently own shares of a competitively strong business, you will earn big profits sooner or later.

Three phenomenal growth stocks to buy right now are Amazon (AMZN 2.50%), MercadoLibre (MELI 0.04%)and Home Depot (HD -0.78%). Here’s what three Motley Fool contributors had to say about these stellar companies.

Amazon’s profitability is increasing

John Ballard (Amazon): Amazon has been a truly long-term shareholder wealth-generating investment. In the past five years alone, the stock has doubled and continues to look strong in 2024.

Amazon is involved in a lot of business opportunities, including e-commerce, digital advertising and cloud computing (eg Amazon Web Services or AWS). E-commerce alone is a multi-trillion dollar market that continues to grow. Trailing-12-month revenue from all of these businesses rose 12% year-over-year to $604 billion in the second quarter.

This is a healthy growth rate for such a large business, which speaks to the substantial opportunities ahead. Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the shopping experience could allow Amazon to gain market share in online retail, particularly in areas such as apparel. The company is making significant investments in generative AI shopping assistants to make browsing and finding the right items more convenient and easier.

Another reason to consider Amazon an unstoppable growth stock worth owning is the improving bottom line. Amazon is becoming a financial powerhouse, with operating profit nearly doubling year over year in Q2. Its free cash flow has more than doubled to $48 billion over the past five years.

With management focused on lowering costs, improving operational efficiency and investing in growth opportunities like AI and cloud services, investors will do very well with Amazon stock in 2025 and beyond.

Rapid growth in multiple businesses

Jennifer Saibil (MercadoLibre): MercadoLibre is the largest e-commerce retailer in Latin America and also has a competitive fintech business. It continues to report strong growth and profits despite a volatile economy and inflation in Latin America, and if the global economy starts to take shape, it will be well-positioned to benefit even more.

E-commerce remains the company’s core business and is growing at robust levels. Gross merchandise volume increased 20% year-over-year in Q2, or 83% on a currency-neutral basis. E-commerce remains under-penetrated in Latin America, which is still moving away from being a largely cash-based society, leaving MercadoLibre with a long runway for growth in this business alone. It serves a population exceeding 500 million and continues to activate new customers who buy more items and shop more often. Even if this were the only deal, it would be an outstanding stock.

But there are many more. The fintech business is growing even faster and presents massive opportunities. The fintech platform offers digital payments, credit cards and more in a fully digital app. It has a large lending business with about 20 million users at a service cost of less than $1. It is an easy, cash-rich business that creates strong funding for the entire company.

Like Amazon, MercadoLibre uses its extensive e-commerce platform for media and advertising with strong results. It ranks #3 in digital advertising market share in its region, with ad revenue growing from $436 million to $705 million in 2023.

Total revenue increased 42% (113% currency neutral) year-over-year to $5.1 billion in Q4, and net income increased from $262 million last year to $531 million this year. These are typical growth rates.

MercadoLibre stock is outperforming S&P 500 this year, it’s up 32% and could climb much higher as it continues to demonstrate solid performance.

Capitalize on the housing recovery

Jeremy Bowman (Home Depot): The housing market has been buoyed by life since mortgage rates began rising rapidly in 2022. Home prices remain high, and the lock-in effect of low mortgage rates during the pandemic has discouraged Americans from moving.

However, the Federal Reserve recently lowered the federal funds rate (with more cuts possible), which should lead to lower interest rates and the housing market is starting to show signs of life. Redfin reported that mortgage foreclosures were up 70% from a month ago after the Fed cut the base rate by 50 basis points, and mortgage purchase applications also rose 10%.

Meanwhile, Americans have record levels of home equity that they are eager to use for home improvement projects.

These trends are all good news for Home Depot, the nation’s leading home improvement retailer. Home Depot’s performance has been sluggish while the housing market has been sluggish, but it should rebound, especially since there is a shortage of millions of homes in the country.

Both presidential candidates have plans to address the housing shortage with proposals that will make it easier to build new homes and make homeownership more affordable, favoring home improvement retailers like Home Depot.

In addition, Home Depot is well positioned to capitalize on the rebound from its acquisition earlier this year of SRS Distribution, a leading building materials distributor that expanded its addressable market by $50 billion and strengthened its the relationship with the professional client.

Home Depot stock might not look like a bargain right now, trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 27, but there’s plenty of leverage in its business model. Once it returns to growth, profits could rise significantly, making the stock a winner in 2025.