Online Tech (Audio) Stocks for the Long Run

There’s a lot to be said for investing in tech stocks even if naysayers warn that investors are at a bad time for owning them. Wise investors know, however, that when you win with tech stocks, you win big especially when you’re buying and holding the right one. Here are three of the top tech stocks from the online audio niche that you may want to buy and hold.

Pandora

David Meyers, an independent contributor for TheStreet, wrote a no holds barred article on Pandora P, declaring it as a “sell.” For Meyers, the stock had no redeeming value, especially when pitted against still privately held Spotify. He claimed Pandora will become a penny stock “someday soon” as Spotify and iTunes Radio continue to expand.

“Competition and tastes would never allow Pandora to thrive financially. While Pandora traded down to the $8 range, it has traded all the way up to $37. The stock closed Thursday at $28.72,” he wrote in his column sometime in July,” Meyer wrote in his column.  

“Technical traders have no reason to like Pandora either. If that isn't a head-and-shoulders chart forming, I don't know what is,” he also said.

Yet the fact that Pandora was able to more than double its share prices mean something. In addition, it was able to quickly recover during the broad market sell-off this week, up by 0.69 percent from its previous close to $22.00 (and still edging higher after hours), according to latest data from Google Finance. It cannot be denied too that it still is the number one online streaming platform in the U.S. and globally. An examiner.com report revealed Pandora has over 73.4 million active users. Pandora is valued at $4.53 billion.

Audioboom

Audioboom Group PLC BOOM is a London-based digital social media audio company that pioneered spoken word audio streaming online through its eponymous platform. It’s a good stock to buy and hold if you’re also trading at the London Stock Exchange.

From trading at 5.00 GBX per piece, the stock has jumped to 15 GBX following a reverse merger with One Delta. At the rate it’s gaining new users (about 80,000 per month), and with the current valuation of its big-cap peers, the company has great upside potential. The company is valued at 70.97 million GBX.

Audioboom has recently partnered with India’s largest entertainment and media company, The Essel Group, marking its foray into the country’s Rs. 1,120 billion media distribution industry.  

Audioboom has grown its customer base to nearly 3 million following its acquisition of Audioboo Limited in May. It has offices in New York, San Francisco and Australia and will be opening a Mumbai office soon. 

It recently raised £8 million through the issuance of 64 million new ordinary shares of no par value to institutional and private investors at a price of 12.5 GBX per share

Apple

Apple (AAPL) has always been a popular tech stock and it doesn’t take a genius to knows why. According to Elevation Partners founding partner and investor Roger McNamee, Apple (along with Google) is inexpensive compared with most stocks on the S&P 500

“Their growth rates aren't going to be huge but their stocks are priced in such a way that you don't need them to be huge,” McNamee was quoted as saying in a CNBC report. “And they both generate enormous amounts of cash.”

Louis Navellier, editor of Blue Chip Growth, proclaimed the stock as a “strong buy” and noted that the stock has surged 41 percent from last year’s figures. 

“Apple is still a ‘strong buy,’ and I expect to see fantastic results when it announces earnings on Monday. Analysts are raising their estimates for the quarter, and that is usually an indication that Apple will post yet another earnings surprise,” she noted in her write-up on Investors Place.

Apple recently acquired Beats Music streaming service for $3 billion according to 9to5Mac.com. Its iTunes Radio service has 40 million listeners.

Apple’s stocks closed at $99.26, according to Yahoo! Finance.