In the share market many investors will be focused on securing a sustainable income stream by buying large-cap companies that are likely to keep turning out big profits whatever the economic weather. Popular companies include the banks like Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ), or supermarket operators like Woolworths Limited (ASX: WOW).
After all in retirement you want income to pay the bills today, not tomorrow, and you're unlikely to want to put that Pacific cruise off another year while you wait for your growth stocks to come to the party.
Still if you have more than three years or so to retirement you can probably afford to focus on buying growth stocks that could deliver big capital gains over time.
Of course you'll want to avoid the loss-making speculative end of the market where capital sinkholes are everywhere to catch investors out.
I would suggest looking to the fastest growing companies from within the S&P/ASX 200 (Index: ^AJXO) (ASX: XJO) as this should offer some comfort that the companies you are targeting have long track records of success and juicy dividends to pay you while you wait for any growth.
One company that I expect could go gangbusters out to 2019 is Corporate Travel Management Ltd (ASX: CTD). Its share price is now $19.50, up 90% since October 2015 and I think it's possible that it could repeat the trick out to October 2019.
Below I have five reasons why Corporate Travel shares could keep climbing.
- This is a business where the founder and chief executive, Jamie Pherous, still owns 22% of the shares on issue, which means the senior management team's interests are tightly aligned to shareholders' interests. I doubt you'll ever find any allegations of management abuse of company credit cards at this company, such as those that have been recently aired at Seven West Media Limited (ASX: SWM).
- This is a sales-driven business at heart which means that the company's employees' incentives are closely aligned to the interests of shareholders. In other words the more an employee can earn in sales commissions the more the company's profits are likely to move higher.
- Thanks in part to its technology platforms, Corporate Travel saves its clients time and money across their travel bookings. This means it has a compelling product offering that shouldn't be too hard to sell to decision makers at targeted companies.
- As the company grows it gains scale advantages in terms of cost savings and in securing better deals with the airlines, hotels and other travel service companies it does block business with. This gives it potential to lift the critical profit margins.
- Much of the recent growth has come via acquisitions of junior rivals in what remains a fragmented target market globally. Management has a track record of adding value via selected acquisitions and globally there are likely to be many more earnings-per-share accretive acquisitions ahead.
Corporate Travel Management is already growing at phenomenal rates and only has a tiny share of the large addressable corporate travel markets it operates in globally. Given it appears to have struck an efficient formula for success it's possible that it continues to deliver strong profit and share price growth in the years ahead.
