Coronavirus Drives Work-From-Home Trend: 5 Stocks To Gain

With coronavirus spreading like a wildfire, an increasing number of technology companies are asking employees to work from home. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has recommended that all employees in North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East work from home, while Twitter has made remote working mandatory for all employees worldwide.

Meanwhile, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon have recommended employees globally to work from home if their jobs allow them to do so. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) have also asked employees to work from home until the end of the month. Nearly a dozen other small companies have also recommended the same for their employees.

While remote working is an effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, it also helps the companies to continue business without hindrance and avoid the slump faced by other sectors that demand physical presence at workspace.

A drastic rise in people working from home has been observed in the past few weeks and that particularly boosts companies, which help in working remotely.

Remote Working Put to Test

The work-from-home trend has been there for a long time now. However, with the mass opting to work remotely, technology is being put to test. Companies can now test the ultimate potential of cloud platforms, software and productivity tools.

In fact, companies are making the most of this situation. For example, Alphabet’s Google offers free video-conferencing through its Hangout Meet conferencing platform for larger meetings with up to 250 participants and live streaming for 100,000 viewers within a domain.

Additionally, many new ideas have also started gaining popularity, especially the ones that reduce the gap when employees work from home. Spatial, a software company, enables meetings via holograms (3-dimensional images). The technology helps people teleport into a 3D space so they can feel that they are in the same room as others.

5 Stocks That Bring Your Office to Home

With more cities going under lockdowns and administration asking people to opt for home quarantine, the remote working trend will be in vogue till the pandemic subsides. Hence, we have shortlisted five companies that provide technological help to work from home.

The first one on our list is Dropbox, Inc. (NASDAQ:DBX) , a collaboration platform that allows individuals, teams, and organizations to collaborate through its website or application. Hence, allowing team players to work together and collaborate even when they are far away or working from home.

Dropbox’s platform offers a premium feature that helps users work offline when they cannot access Wi-fi or Internet. Users can simply opt for “Available offline” option for individual files and work on them and update and sync files automatically when one is connected to the Internet.

This Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 44% compared with the Zacks Internet - Services industry’s projected earnings growth of 1.9%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s current-year earnings has been revised 26.3% upward over the past 60 days.You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Next on our list is a cloud-based video conferencing tool,Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZM) . Zoom allows individuals to meet and work together productively when meeting in-person isn't possible, helping employees to feel and stay connected. So far this year, the company is estimated to have added 2.22 million monthly active users. This marks a drastic rise from the 1.99 million users it added in 2019.

Zoom carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 17.1% compared with the Zacks Internet - Software industry’s projected earnings growth of 4.2%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s current-year earnings has been revised 51.9% upward over the past 60 days.

DocuSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU) , a Zacks Rank #2 company that provides electronic signature technology and Digital Transaction Management services helped users of their platform assemble documents, secure data, and authenticate signees. Nearly 7,132 companies use DocuSign currently.

The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 32.3% compared with the Zacks Technology Services industry’s projected earnings growth of 5%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DocuSign’s current-year earnings has been revised 2.5% upward over the past 60 days.

Cloud computing plays a crucial role in supporting this work-from-home trend and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) makes it to the list, thanks to the Amazon Web Services. This secure cloud services platform offers computing power, database storage, content delivery, and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow. A highlight of this platform is AWS Transit Gateway, which enables users to connect their Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and their on-premises networks to a single gateway. This, brings office to their home and helps in connecting with their colleagues.

Amazon.com’s expected earnings growth rate for the current year is nearly 20% compared with the Zacks Internet - Commerce industry’s projected earnings growth of 3.8%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s current-year earnings has been revised 5.7% upward over the past 60 days. Amazon.com carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Lastly, we have,RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG) , a Zacks Rank #3 company, which offers software-as-a-service solutions that enable businesses to communicate, collaborate, and connect. RingCentral Office modifies a personal computer and a phone into a complete cloud communication system, leveraging the cloud-based PBX services to help employees use same tools used for working in the office.

The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 14.6% against the Zacks Internet - Software and Services industry’s projected earnings decline of 6.3%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s current-year earnings has been revised 2.2% upward over the past 60 days.

Today's Best Stocks from Zacks

Would you like to see the updated picks from our best market-beating strategies? From 2017 through 2019, while the S&P 500 gained and impressive +53.6%, five of our strategies returned +65.8%, +97.1%, +118.0%, +175.7% and even +186.7%.

This outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. From 2000 – 2019, while the S&P averaged +6.0% per year, our top strategies averaged up to +54.7% per year.

See their latest picks free >>