Some of the S&P/ASX 20 Index (ASX: XTL) shares are rated as buys by leading analysts and they may be able to produce returns.
Businesses in the ASX 20 are some of the largest in the country. Some of those companies include ones like Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) and BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP).
But analysts really like these ASX shares from the ASX 20:
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Goodman Group (ASX: GMG)
Goodman Group is a property business with operations throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, North America and Brazil. It's the largest industrial property group on the ASX and one of the world's largest listed specialist investment managers of industrial property and business globally. Goodman has an integrated strategy of owning, developing and managing property.
It's currently rated as a buy by the broker Morgan Stanley with a price target of $23.
Goodman is a very large business. At 31 March 2021, it had $52.9 billion of total assets under management. It experienced 3.3% like for like net property income (NPI) growth in managed partnerships. The occupancy rate across the partnerships was 98%.
The ASX 20 share is working on a pipeline of big projects. At 31 March 2021, it had $9.6 billion of development work in progress.
The property business is expected to changing client and customer demand. It says:
Changing consumption trends across the physical and digital spaces are fundamentally impacting demand. In response, Goodman is developing new space particularly through multi-storey and higher intensity buildings within our urban locations.
Goodman is expecting to generate double digit operating profit growth in FY21. Operating profit is expected to be $1.2 billion, representing earnings per share (EPS) growth of 12% on FY20.
Xero Limited (ASX: XRO)
Xero is one of the world's largest software accounting businesses. Its offering is through the cloud, which means that users have great flexibility in how and where they access their numbers and business. The ASX 20 share also has numerous efficient and useful automated tools to save time for accountants and business owners.
It's currently rated as a buy by Morgan Stanley.
The ASX 20 share has been growing at a fast pace for a number of years. It has grown beyond Australia and New Zealand. Xero now has a global subscriber base of more than 2.7 million. The UK is a particularly large revenue base for Xero, with more than 720,000 subscribers. North America has more than 285,000 subscribers. There are more than 175,000 subscribers across the rest of the world, in places such as South Africa and Singapore.
Xero has a very high gross profit margin of 86%. That means that 86% of new revenue can fall to the next profit line.
The company is seeing the benefits of long-term subscribers who love its services and productivity. In FY21, Xero's 20% subscriber growth contributed to a 17% increase in annualised monthly recurring revenue (AMRR) to $963.6 million. Xero explained that growing awareness among small businesses of the benefit of digital tools and cloud technologies contributed to lower churn and a 38% increase in total lifetime value to $7.65 billion.
