Cathie Wood Goes Bargain Hunting: 3 Stocks She Just Bought

Key Points

• Ark Invest added to its stakes in Figma, Amazon, and Toast on Thursday.

• Figma has fallen more than 60% since last month's high, but it hasn't had a broken IPO.

• Amazon and Toast are experiencing explosive bottom-line growth.

• 10 stocks we like better than Figma ›

Cathie Wood has slowed the pace of her transactions in recent weeks, but the founder CEO of Ark Invest got busy on Thursday. She made several purchases for Ark's family of aggressive growth exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Some of the more notable buys for Wood on Thursday include Figma (NYSE: FIG), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Toast (NYSE: TOST). She added to existing positions in all three stocks. Let's take a closer look.

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1. Figma

Figma has been one of the market's hardest-hit stocks since the start of last month, but the summertime debutante is somehow not a broken IPO. The provider of cloud-based design tools for digital platforms hit the market in late July at $33 a share. Figma stock traded almost as high as $143 on its second day of trading, only to fall down the mid-$50s today. The shares have plummeted 61% from their peak through Thursday's close, but you're up 70% if you were fortunate enough to get in on the actual IPO. Most investors didn't, as the offering was 40 times oversubscribed.

This isn't the first time that the market has had a volatile reaction to Figma in the stock market. When Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) announced a $20 billion deal to acquire the online design specialist in 2022, shares of Adobe would go on to surrender $35 billion in market cap in the first three days following the news. The deal never closed, but not because of the market's chilly reception. Both companies would agree to terminate the deal 15 months later, as scrutiny overseas made it unlikely that it would clear regulatory approval. Adobe would go on to roll out its own vector-based website and mobile app design tool, Adobe XD. Figma would hit the market this summer, with underwriters pricing the offering at a valuation just shy of the original $20 billion price tag.

Image source: Getty Images.

Figma has a lot of what attracts growth investors. It's an artificial intelligence (AI) play, as the tools lean on AI to generate user experience and user interface designs. It's also a speedster. Revenue rose a hearty 48% last year, and it has stayed above 40% top-line growth through the first two quarters of this year. It's profitable, at least on an adjusted basis. The market has simply reversed most -- but not all -- of its initial euphoric pop.

Wood got in on the July 31 IPO for Ark investors. Thursday was the fourth time that she had added to that position. The shares aren't cheap, trading at 30 times sales and 117 times trailing earnings. Analysts also see revenue decelerating markedly in the next couple of years. They are currently modeling a 23% increase on the top line next year, slowing to revenue gains in the high teens in each of the two following years. Wood obviously sees the recent pullback as a buying opportunity, but she didn't nail the bottom the three previous times that she added to her stake.

2. Amazon

Wood isn't trying to nail the bottom with Thursday's Amazon purchase. The world's leading online retailer is currently within 5% of hitting the all-time high it scored back in February.

Amazon isn't growing its business as quickly as Figma. Net sales rose 13% in its latest quarter. This may not seem like a lot, but it's actually ahead of the 9%-12% growth it has posted in each of past three years. The upticks get stronger at the other end of the income statement. Net income soared a better-than-expected 33%. Having its higher-margin Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud business outpace its e-commerce segment with 18% in revenue growth for the quarter helps.

The valuation multiples are understandably lower for "Magnificent Seven" workhorse Amazon than they are for Figma. They are at different points in their growth cycles. If you approach Amazon as a tech services provider instead of simply an online retailer, the multiples are even relatively reasonable despite the market bellwether trading near its peak.

3. Toast

Finally, we can make a toast to Toast. The provider of point-of-sale platforms for restaurant operators is familiar to those who frequent eateries. It's not just an order-taking and ultimately transaction-settling device. Toast helps restaurants manage third-party delivery app orders, customer loyalty programs, payroll, and countless back-of-the-house solutions.

If you checked in on restaurant stocks this past earnings season, you saw that it wasn't pretty. Many iconic chains posted negative comps, and the industry is vulnerable to any potential economic softening. However, Toast is making it up in volume. It now serves 148,000 different locations, a 24% increase over the past year. Gross payment volume rising 23% in its latest quarter suggests that the average restaurant is just trying to sell as much as it did a year ago, but the fact that Toast is stretching its wings now will make it that much better when the industry itself starts to grow again. In the meantime, Toast is cashing in on the scalability of its model with net income rising fivefold in its latest financial update.

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Rick Munarriz has positions in Toast. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Amazon, and Toast. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.