The US stock market had a solid September thanks to the Federal Reserve's highly anticipated interest rate cut. However, escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East could weigh on investor sentiment this month.
Still, investors could benefit from ignoring short-term turbulence and following the recommendations of leading Wall Street analysts and selecting stocks with attractive long-term growth potential.
With that in mind, here are three stocks that are favored by the Street's top pros, according to TipRanks, a platform that ranks analysts based on past performance.
CyberArk software
This week's first choice is CyberArk software (CYBR), a cybersecurity company primarily focused on identity security. The company delivered better-than-expected quarterly results and raised its full-year guidance, indicating solid demand for its products.
Recently, RBC Capital analyst Matthew Hedberg initiated coverage on CYBR stock with a “Buy” rating and a $328 price target, calling it a top mid-cap cybersecurity idea. The analyst believes the company is “well-positioned to consolidate identity spending and sustain sustained and increasingly profitable growth.”
Hedberg expects CyberArk to continue to grow strongly, driven by demand for identity security and significant room for growth in its core Privileged Access Management (PAM) market. Additionally, the analyst believes the company can grow beyond the PAM market by pursuing cross-selling opportunities in the access, secrets, endpoint privilege management (EPM) and machine identities markets.
Hedberg also expects the company to benefit from the acquisition of Venafi, a machine identity specialist. He expects Venafi's growth to recover to more than 20% and positively impact CyberArk's growth and margins over time.
Overall, Hedberg is optimistic about further increasing CyberArk's profitability and expects the company's organic growth to exceed 20% over several years, supported by an estimated total addressable market (TAM) of $60 billion .
Hedberg ranks 164th among more than 9,000 analysts tracked by TipRanks. Its valuations were profitable 62% of the time and delivered an average return of 14.7%. (See CYBR hedge fund activity on TipRanks)
Uber technologies
We are moving to the ride-sharing and food delivery platform Uber technologies (ABOVE). After discussions with company management, JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth reiterated his buy rating on UBER shares with a price target of $95.
Highlighting key takeaways from the meetings, Anmuth said management is confident of achieving a three-year mid- to high-teens compound annual growth rate for gross bookings, supported by a stable macro and demand environment since second-quarter results . In particular, management stated that demand in both mobility and delivery businesses continued to be good.
Anmuth also noted the company's optimism about expanding its advertising business to Uber Eats and grocery stores. Notably, the ad business averages $1 billion as of the second quarter, or about 1% of gross delivery bookings. In fact, delivery profits have improved in recent quarters due to the high-margin advertising business. Uber expects its food ad business to account for 5% of gross bookings over time.
The analyst also noted the company's growing interest in autonomous vehicles (AV). “Uber can provide value to AV technology providers by driving demand/utilization and building the AV ecosystem through fleet operations,” Anmuth said based on discussions with management.
Anmuth is ranked #93 among more than 9,000 analysts tracked by TipRanks. Its valuations were profitable 62% of the time and delivered an average return of 18.4%. (See UBER stock buybacks on TipRanks)
Metaplatforms
This week's third stock pick is a social media company Metaplatforms (META). At the recent Meta Connect event, the company unveiled Quest 3S, its latest virtual reality headset, as well as other innovations including its latest prototype augmented reality (AR) smart glasses (Orion) and the new features of its Meta AI Chatbot.
Following the announcements at the event, Baird analyst Colin Sebastian reiterated a Buy rating on Meta stock and increased the price target from $530 to $605.
The analyst attributed the higher price target to a number of factors, including significant opportunities to expand core monetization with artificial intelligence (AI)/generative AI capabilities and continued momentum in the messaging space. Its improved outlook also reflects “generally positive social media advertising controls,” with September looking better than trends noted in August.
The analyst increased its 2025 revenue and 2024 and 2025 earnings per share estimates to reflect stable macroeconomic trends, higher contributions from messaging and improvements related to devices and AI-driven platforms. However, it slightly lowered its operating margin estimate for 2025 to reflect increased network and depreciation costs.
Commenting on Meta Connect, Sebastian said he believes this year's event reflects the significant progress the company has made with its Reality Labs division and AI/generative AI. In particular, the analyst believes that the Llama update gives Meta's LLMs (large language models) another advantage over close competitors such as Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. He is also optimistic about the innovations surrounding the meta-AI assistant and assumes that it will be the most popular AI assistant by the end of 2024.
Sebastian is ranked #277 among more than 9,000 analysts tracked by TipRanks. Its valuations were profitable 57% of the time and delivered an average return of 13.6%. (See META Insider trading activity on TipRanks)