HubSpot’s focus on small business is paying off

HubSpot is an industry leader for customer relationship management in the small-business niche. The CRM market is expected to grow at 13.3% per year, topping $170 billion by 2030, according to Precedence Research.

HubSpot’s platform includes productivity software for marketing, sales and customer service, and solutions for content management, data integration and workflow automation.

Collectively, these tools help clients attract visitors with engaging websites, social media content and marketing material, then convert those visitors into loyal customers. HubSpot’s “freemium” model and focus on smaller businesses help it land clients, and its tiered pricing structure encourages clients to expand usage over time.

In 2021, HubSpot’s revenue soared 47% to $1.3 billion, and in its first quarter of 2022, revenue rose 41%. In that first quarter, the company increased its customer base by 26%, and the average subscription revenue per customer climbed 12%, showing the efficacy of management’s land-and-expand growth strategy.

HubSpot’s stock recently traded at a price-to-sales ratio of 10.5, well below its historical average of 15.4. That’s why this growth stock looks like a bargain. (The Motley Fool owns shares of HubSpot.)

Ask the Fool

From B.B. in Los Alamos, N.M.: When would be a good time for me to buy bonds?

The Fool responds: The answer to that question will vary from person to person, depending on circumstances and temperament. Those who can handle some risk and who have many years — if not decades — before retirement might choose to focus solely on stocks, as stocks have outperformed bonds over most long periods.

Still, even risk-takers might want to include some bonds in their portfolios for diversification, as bonds sometimes rise in value when the stock market falls — though it doesn’t always work that way. For example, the stock market is down sharply so far this year, and the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index was recently down, too — by about 12%.

There are many kinds of bonds, often issued by governments or corporations, with different rates and terms. While U.S. government bonds are among the safest, they tend to offer lower interest rates than corporate bonds. If you expect interest rates to rise for a while, you might invest in shorter-term bonds instead of getting locked into a low rate for a long time. Also consider the U.S. Treasury’s “I-bonds,” which feature inflation-adjusted interest rates. The Series I savings bond’s rate was recently 9.62%!

From H.D. in Murfreesboro, Tenn.: What good books cover stock market history?

The Fool responds: Check out Peter L. Bernstein’s Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street (Wiley, $20), A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation by Scott Nations (William Morrow, $18) and A History of the Global Stock Market: From Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley by B. Mark Smith (University of Chicago Press, $17.50).

The Fool’s School

When lottery jackpots are offering hundreds of millions of dollars — or even when they only offer a few million — it can be tempting to buy some tickets. But it’s worth learning more about the odds of winning before you do so.

The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338, while a Mega Millions jackpot’s odds are 1 in 302,575,350. It can be hard to wrap your head around such big numbers, so consider this: There are close to 333 million people in America. The odds of being one person in America picked at random are not that far off from those jackpot odds.

Here’s some more food for thought: You are far more likely to be killed by an object from outer space (1 in 700,000), to be struck by lightning in a given year (1 in 1,222,000), to die on a commercial flight due to an accident or crash (1 in 29,400,000) or to be made a saint by the pope (1 in 20,000,000) than you are to win one of those jackpots.

If you think you’re tripling your odds of winning the Powerball jackpot by buying three tickets instead of one, you’re right — but odds of 3 in 292 million instead of 1 in 292 million are still very close to zero. Even if you bought a million tickets, your odds would be down to 1 in 292 — still unlikely.

Remember, too, that if you spend any significant sum on lottery tickets, you’re likely to lose most or all of that money, while it could have made you a lot of money had you invested it in the stock market (which tends to produce long-term gains despite occasional downturns).

If you still want to buy a ticket or two now and then for fun, just think of it more as entertainment than as a possible path to wealth. As Fran Lebowitz reportedly quipped, “I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.”

My Smartest Investment

From Rob, online: My smartest investment was buying Canadian bank stocks and leaving them alone for years and years.

The Fool responds: That’s how lots of investors have made their smartest investments — by parking their money in healthy and growing companies and leaving it alone for years.

Here’s a familiar example from the United States: If you invested in Microsoft decades ago and hung on to your shares for a few years, you could have done very well, possibly tripling your money, or even increasing it tenfold (or much more). Even if you bought only 10 years ago and hung on for a few years, you could have doubled your money. But those who bought, say, 25 years ago and hung on could have seen an initial $10,000 investment turn into more than $180,000 — or into about $260,000 if they reinvested dividends into additional shares of stock.

Bank stocks can be great long-term investments as long as the banks in question are well-managed and not taking on too much risk in their lending. Their fortunes can rise and fall with interest rates, but they’re also well-regulated, required to take various steps to reduce their risk of failure. We tend to think of banks as just lending money and paying interest on deposits, but many banks also make lots of money via investment banking activities, such as underwriting corporate bonds and stock.

Who am I?

Back in 1870, I was the first to sell whiskey in sealed glass bottles. In 1890, my founder partnered with his accountant and friend, giving me my hyphenated name. I bottled whiskey for “medicinal purposes” during Prohibition. Now, with a market value recently near $34 billion and about 4,700 employees, I’m a major global spirits company; my brands include Jack Daniel’s, Gentleman Jack, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, Coopers’ Craft, The GlenDronach, Benriach, Glenglassaugh, Slane, Herradura, el Jimador, Korbel, SonomaCutrer, Finlandia, Chambord and Fords Gin. For a while, I owned the Lenox china and Hartmann luggage businesses. Who am I?