As governments across the world are gradually relaxing shelter-in-place measures, aimed at curbing the spread of coronavirus infection, fears of a rise in infection cases are spreading. The fears might not be unwarranted as over the past three days, a record number of new coronavirus cases have been reported in the United States.

 

Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and South Carolina are some of the states that have witnessed a resurgence of new COVID-19 cases.

 

Similarly, China on Jun 13 registered the highest uptick in coronavirus cases since mid-April, according to Bloomberg News citing National Health Commission data. And Beijing recently shut down its largest wholesale food market amid a sudden spike in coronavirus cases. Nearly 49 new coronavirus cases were confirmed recently, tracing to a wholesale market known for supplying meat and vegetables.

 

And with new cases on the rise, most are no doubt willing to spend a lot more time at home. The stay-at-home trend is a blessing in disguise for video streaming services, videoconferencing platforms and dominant cloud players, to say the least. In fact, shelter-in-place stocks rallied on Jun 15, with majority of them outperforming the broader market. Given the bullish trend, keeping an eye on some of them won’t be a bad proposition. Take a look – 

 

 

Shares of Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (ZM Quick QuoteZM - Free Report) rose 8.9% to close at a record high of $239.02 on Jun 15 after touching an all-time intra-day high of $239.59. In comparison, the broader S&P 500 closed up 0.8%.

 

The stock moved upward on expectations of increased Zoom’s video conferencing services and products due to the renewed spread of coronavirus, compelling a large number of people to stay connected with friends and family, and work from home.

 

In recent times, the company’s paid subscriber growth for the video conferencing service already improved, and CEO Eric Yuan said that the Zoom platform has been able to provide “an incredibly valuable service to our beloved users” amid the coronavirus-induced stay-at-home scenario. 

 

Going forward, the company’s efforts to eradicate security and privacy flaws are expected to help Zoom Video further expand user base. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current-year earnings has risen more than 100% over the past 60 days.

The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current quarter and year is 462.5% and 237.1%, respectively. In fact, the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) flaunts a Growth Score of A. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

 

 

As majority of people are expected to remotely work or learn, most of the companies need to move a bulk portion of their workloads to the cloud. Thus, any consumer-oriented business needs to have a digital presence built on the cloud in order to survive.

 

Hence, Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN Quick QuoteAMZN - Free Report) is certainly under the spotlight as it is currently one of the biggest players in the cloud infrastructure market. The Seattle-based company has a solid presence throughout the Internet via Amazon Web Services (“AWS”). And some of big names, including General Motors, Baidu, Spotify, McDonald’s, Twitter and Johnson & Johnson, use AWS.

 

AWS has more than a 30% market share in cloud infrastructure and easily dwarfs rivals Azure (17% share) and Google Cloud (6% share). By the way, Amazon in itself is benefiting from its Prime program, delivery and logistic system in the e-commerce space. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current-quarter earnings has advanced 4.8% over the past 30 days. The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the next quarter is 18.9%. Amazon currently possesses a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

 

 

Netflix, Inc. (NFLX Quick QuoteNFLX - Free Report) is well poised to add millions of subscribers owing to more people confined to their homes. The provider of streaming services, in fact, has been expanding its subscriber growth for a while now, mostly driven by content strength, focus on originals across various genres and languages, rapid international expansion and partnerships with telcos.

 

To top it, Netflix entered this year’s Oscars with 24 nominations, and walked away with two. Such wins certainly help lure and retain subscribers in the face of challenges from rival services like Disney+ and Apple TV+.

 

Netflix currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current-year earnings has moved 6.3% north over the past 60 days. The company’s expected earnings growth rate for the current quarter and year is 205% and 55%, respectively.

 

 

Experts extracted 7 stocks from the list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys that has beaten the market more than 2X over with a stunning average gain of +24.1% per year. 

 

These 7 were selected because of their superior potential for immediate breakout.