We recently compiled a list of the 12 Best Growth Stocks to Buy and Hold for the Long Term. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) stands against the other growth stocks.
What’s the Bull Case for US Equities?
The market closed last week mostly lower, however, the S&P 500 has been up more than 7% since April 11, indicating a returning positive sentiment. On May 10, David Lefkowitz, Equity Strategist at UBS Global Wealth Management, joined CNBC to discuss his bull case for the US equities. Lefkowitz acknowledged the volatility that has been around since the tariff announcement; however, he believes that backdrop remains fairly constructive. He elaborated that the market has had some significant buy signals since early April, characterised by the volatility index giving one of the highest readings, investor sentiment being cautious, and investor positioning has been depressed. Historically speaking, whenever these things have happened in the past, the US equities have performed exceptionally well in the preceding 6 to 12 months. Lefkowitz noted that he is not too concerned with the day-to-day news and volatility, as the market will get choppy on trade negotiation deals. Rather, he is more focused on the bigger picture, which indicates that stocks will ultimately end up higher over the next 12 months.
While answering a question regarding the recent rebound in the market, Lefkowitz highlighted that when the volatility index comes down, as it has over the past few weeks, history tells us that the market does not make new lows. Although the market will still be chopping a little. However, it is anticipated to stay within the historic average of 5%. Moreover, the equity strategist is also not concerned about the valuations and believes that as soon as the companies start posting earnings growth, the backdrop will help the market reach its next high.
While talking about his most convicted sectors, Lefkowitz noted that he likes secular growth stocks. He elaborated that growth as a sector was hit earlier this year due to doubts regarding AI trends and its ability to generate a return on investment. This has resulted in the sector being at the bottom of the market. However, Lefkowitz believes that the demand for AI products and the sophisticated infrastructure will keep growing for at least the next few years, thereby generating sustainable earnings growth.
Our Methodology
To compile the list of 12 best growth stocks to buy and hold for the long term, we used the Finviz stock screener, Seeking Alpha, and Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 hedge fund database. Using the screener, we aggregated a list of growth stocks that have grown their sales by at least 30% over the past 5 years. Next, we cross-checked the 5-year sales growth for each stock from Seeking Alpha and ranked the stocks in ascending order of the number of hedge fund investors.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A close up of a complex looking PCB board with several intergrated semiconductor parts.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD)
5-Year Sales Growth: 30.81%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is a semiconductor company that focuses on performance computing, graphics, and visualization technologies. The company creates computing products and solutions for a variety of customer markets. It operates through four main business segments, including Data Center, Client, Gaming, and Embedded.
On May 8, DBS analyst Amanda Tan maintained a Hold rating on the stock, highlighting growth prospects and certain risks for the company. The analyst noted that Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) demonstrated strong growth in the data center segment, driven by rising demand for AI technologies, including the new AI accelerators. An instance of increasing demand for the company’s products can be witnessed in this March 31 press release. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) announced that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure launched new Compute E6 Standard shapes powered by AMD’s 5th Gen EPYC processors. Management noted that the 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors offer enhancements such as higher thread density, improved memory bandwidth, and more PCIe Gen5 lanes for input and output.
However, Tan remains cautious due to the tariff situation, which can reduce GPU revenue for the company. Moreover, the analyst also believes that the heavy dependence on the PC market makes it vulnerable to economic downturns.
Regardless of these challenges, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) grew its Q1 2025 revenue by 36% year-over-year to reach $7.4 billion. Whereas gross profits also improved by 46% during the same time to reach $3.74 billion. It is one of the best growth stocks to buy and hold for the long term.
Artisan Global Opportunities Fund stated the following regarding Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Among our top detractors were Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), Novo Nordisk and Danaher. Shares of AMD declined in Q4, which capped off a frustrating year of stock performance that did not seem to match its fundamental progress. Regarding its AI opportunity, the company accomplished everything we had hoped for over the past 18 months. It successfully entered the market with its MI300 graphic processing unit (GPU) chip and raised its latest 2024 AI-related revenue guidance to $5.0 billion from $4.5 billion. However, its shares have experienced weakness for two primary reasons. First is the emergence of custom AI accelerator chip solutions from Broadcom and Marvell (a Q4 buy) as alternatives to the GPU solutions from NVIDIA and AMD. While this competitive threat is more significant than we had initially anticipated, we continue to be excited about AMD’s opportunity moving forward. We believe the AI-related market will grow to $400 billion–$500 billion in the next three years (compared to $100 billion in 2024). We expect that NVIDIA’s market share will fall from ~90%in2024to60%–80%overthesameperiodasitcedes market share to AMD (from5%in2024to10%–20%) and custom accelerator solutions (from 5% in 2024 to 10%–20%). Under these assumptions, we expect AI GPUs to double AMD’s total 2024 sales. Second is cyclical struggles within other areas of its business. While data center revenues have more than doubled over the past two years, the gaming business is down more than 60%, and embedded (specialized chips found in various industrial and consumer products) is down20%.As its data center business continues to grow and the cyclical areas of its business bounce back, we expect AMD to deliver stronger earnings growth.”
Overall AMD ranks 2nd on our list of the best growth stocks to buy and hold for the long term. While we acknowledge the potential of AMD as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMD but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.