The two ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) shares that I cover below might be options for growth over the longer term.
These are businesses that have achieved a strong market position but still have plenty of growth potential of revenue and earnings over time.
Xero Limited (ASX: XRO)
Xero is now one of the world’s leading accounting software businesses that delivers its product to clients through the cloud.
Despite a decade of growth, Xero is still adding enormous amounts of subscribers every reporting period. Australian subscribers grew by 22% to 1.1 million. This was the best ever year for subscriber growth. UK subscribers went up 17% to 720,000 and revenue grew by 22%. The second half saw a marked recovery, it was the second strongest six-month period in the company’s history. New Zealand subscribers rose by 14% to 446,000 and revenue rose by 12%. North American subscribers grew by 18% to 285,000. The rest of the world subscribers surged by 40% to 175,000.
I’m not expecting that percentage of subscriber growth to last forever, but double digit growth at this size is impressive. The fact that it comes with a very high gross profit margin is very useful. In FY21, Xero’s gross profit margin saw growth from 85.2% to 86%.
Winning more subscribers is a hugely important factor at this point because of the long lifetime of subscribers and the profitable nature of each subscriber.
The ASX 200 share continues to aggressively pursue growth and this could lead to higher profitability for the business when it reaches a certain size, or market share.
JB Hi-Fi Limited (ASX: JBH)
The large electronics and appliance retailer not only has the brand JB Hi-Fi to sell a vast amount of products through, but it also owns The Good Guys as well.
Both of the Australian networks of stores have seen high levels of sales and growth over the last 15 months. It seems like the FY21 result is going to show a substantial amount of growth.
The HY21 result saw total sales rise by 23.7% to $4.9 billion for the first half of FY21, with online sales surging 161.7% to $678.8 million.
JB Hi-Fi’s EBIT (EBIT explained) grew by 76% to $462.8 million. The net profit after tax (NPAT) went up by 86.2% to $317.7 million.
In the third quarter of FY21, the ASX 200 share’s total sales growth was 10.4% for JB Hi-Fi Australia, 16% for New Zealand and 5.8% for The Good Guys. In summary, it continues to grow. Greater scale is likely to come with stronger profit margins.
JB Hi-Fi sells a number of ‘essentials’ – homes need fridges, washing machines and so on. Lots of people can’t ‘live’ or work without their phones and laptops either. I don’t think JB Hi-Fi is as much about discretionary spending as people may think. It could be more defensive than many investors expect.
