Stock Market Sell-Off: 2 Growth Stocks to Buy Hand Over Fist

With the return of market volatility, anxiety levels are rising for retirement savers, but if you're not going to be tapping into your savings for many years, there's no reason to worry. Stock market dips are historically the best time to invest, because lower share prices allow you to gain more of a company's earnings, which leads to great returns when the markets recover.

To help you in your search for undervalued growth stocks, here are two excellent candidates.

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1. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is coming off a year of strong growth as it continued to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring more personalization to its social media platforms. The company is set for strong growth yet trades at a reasonable 24 times earnings.

Meta Platforms spends billions on technology every year to support the growth of its apps, and importantly, AI. More than 700 million monthly active users have tried its Meta AI assistant, and management expects that number to grow to 1 billion in 2025.

Meta AI is quickly scaling into one of the most used AI assistants. The growing adoption highlights the advantage the company has with more than 3.3 billion people using its services every day across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads.

This large user base drives substantial advertising revenues. Last year, Meta Platforms earned $62 billion of net income on $164 billion of revenue, with the top line growing 22%. Other than Meta AI, the company also offers professional AI tools that improve ad targeting across its family of apps, which is benefiting the business. Over the long term, Meta could discover new revenue streams from offering premium AI services that pads the company's bottom line.

Analysts expect Meta to deliver 16% annualized earnings growth in the coming years. While no one has a crystal ball for the stock in the near term, investors that buy shares today should see returns that roughly follow the underlying growth of the business from here.

2. The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) is a leading digital ad-buying platform that is benefiting from the growth in digital advertising -- a market valued at $800 billion and growing.

A small revenue miss compared to expectations last quarter sent the stock plummeting, but nothing has changed the company's competitive position or long-term opportunity, which means investors have a great opportunity to buy shares on the cheap.

Ad agencies and brands love The Trade Desk because it offers a wide range of ad inventory, and it offers the technology to make profitable ad-buying decisions. For example, its Kokai AI platform can quickly sort through millions of ad impressions every second to help advertisers find the right deal. Better pricing, targeting, and ad performance is helping The Trade Desk gain more clients.

The Trade Desk generates revenue by charging a fee of the total amount its customers spend on ads and other services. Revenue grew 26% to $2.4 billion in 2024, and the business earned a healthy profit margin of 16%.

Connected TV continues to be one of biggest opportunities, where The Trade Desk has valuable partnerships with Roku and Disney. The connected TV ad market is estimated to reach $46 billion by 2026, according to Statista, providing tremendous upside for the company.

Revenue is expected to grow 18% this year, yet the stock is trading at its lowest valuation in years. Analysts expect earnings to reach $3.89 by 2028, which makes the current share price of around $50 look like a bargain. Investors that take advantage of the sell-off are likely looking at handsome gains down the road.

Should you invest $1,000 in Meta Platforms right now?

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Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Ballard has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Roku, The Trade Desk, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.