3 Off-the-Beaten-Path Top Stock Picks for 2025

A new year brings about many familiar rituals for market watchers. Investors closely watch Wall Street gauges and indicators such as the Santa Claus rally, the 'First Five Days' barometer, and the "January" barometer. And, of course, analysts and firms present their annual market outlooks and top stock picks for the year ahead. 

Each year for the last few decades, MoneyShow reaches out to experts to get their favorite investment ideas for the coming 12 months. The result is their annual “Top Picks” report.

The following selections from that 90-page report, are probably not household names to most investors.

Louis Navellier Navellier & Associates

Top Picks 2025: Sezzle 

Sezzle Inc. (SEZL) is a technology-enabled payments company operating primarily in Canada and the US. The company provides payment solutions in-store, at online retail stores, and through proprietary payments solutions that connect consumers with merchants, notes Louis Navellier, founder and chairman of Navellier & Associates.

More specifically, the company offers the Sezzle Platform, which provides a payments solution for consumers that extends credit at the point-of-sale. This allows consumers to purchase and receive the ordered merchandise at the time of sale while paying in installments over time. Other options include:

1) Pay-in-Four, which allows consumers to pay a fourth of the purchase price upfront and then another fourth of the purchase price every two weeks thereafter over a total of six weeks.

2) Pay-in-Full, which allows consumers to pay for the full value of their order upfront through the Sezzle Platform without the extension of credit.

3) Pay-in-Two and other alternative installment options, which allow consumers to pay half of the value of their order upfront and the second half in two weeks.

Additionally, the company provides the Sezzle Virtual Card, which allows consumers to access the Sezzle Platform in the form of closed-end installment loans and shop with merchants that are not integrated with Sezzle...Sezzle Anywhere, a paid subscription service that allows consumers to use their Sezzle Virtual Card at any merchant online or in-store...Sezzle Premium, a paid subscription service that allows its consumers to access large, non-integrated premium merchants...and Sezzle Up, an opt-in feature of the Sezzle Platform.

In the third quarter of 2024, the company’s revenue rose 71.3% to $70 million from $40.8 million in the same quarter a year ago. During the same period, Sezzle’s earnings rose 1,039.1% to $15.4 million, or $2.62 per share, from $1.3 million, or 23 cents per share.

Excluding extraordinary items, the company’s operating earnings were $2.92 per share. The analyst community was expecting revenue of $52.6 million and operating earnings of 89 cents per share, so the company posted a 33.1% revenue surprise and a 228.1% earnings surprise. The stock is an outstanding buy!

Roger Conrad Conrad's Utility Investor

Top Picks 2025: Clearway Energy

You can count on the reliable earnings and generous dividends offered by utility stocks, which are still undervalued and under-represented in Americans’ portfolios. For more aggressive investors, Clearway Energy Inc. CWEN fits the bill, advises Roger Conrad, editor of Conrad’s Utility Investor.

Will the US economy avoid a hard landing? Has inflation really been tamed, or is it ready to flare up again? Will the Federal Reserve continue its pivot to lower interest rates? And how hard will the incoming Trump Administration push its campaign promises?

Investors should be asking all those questions heading into 2025 — especially with nearly one-third of the S&P 500 weighted to just 6 “Big Tech” stocks, all currently priced to perfection. But utilities like CWEN remain attractive.

The company has posted steadily growing cash flow and dividends by adding long-term contracted power generation since former parent NRG Energy Inc. NRG launched it as NRG Yield in the previous decade. And it has accelerated growth this decade under Clearway Group (54.91% of voting shares, 42.12% economic interest), which is owned by TotalEnergies SE TTE and Blackrock/GIP.

The company plans to announce Q4 results Feb. 21. Current guidance is for 7.5% to 12% compounded annual growth for cash available for distribution (CAFD) through 2027, with 5% to 8% dividend growth. That’s off a yield recently close to 6%.

The primary fuel for growth is drop-down acquisitions of fully contracted renewable energy assets developed by Clearway Group. Those now include five gigawatts of generation assets co-located with data centers.

Over the past 12 months, Clearway-contracted solar output has increased by more than 60%. Overall renewable energy generation is up 27%. The two largest ongoing expansion efforts are a 500-megawatt solar-plus-storage facility in Texas expected to reach commercial operation in 2025, and a drop down of 320 MW of “storage hybridization” projects entering service in 2026.

The company also owns an increasingly valuable portfolio of natural gas generation that’s vital to California’s power grid. These assets could be sold at a lucrative price in coming years. In the meantime, they’re a reliable source of cash flow, balancing off changeable wind and solar conditions.

As for financing, Clearway will fund the bulk of its 2025-2027 funding plans with cash flow. That’s a good place to be right now, with investors generally wary of renewable energy stocks following US elections.

With Clearway posting solid results, it’s only a matter of time before investors lose their fear and this stock takes out its all-time high in the mid-30s.

John Gardner Blackhawk Wealth Advisors’ Market Insights

Top Picks 2025: Credo Technology Group Holding

Computer servers in data centers equipped with AI chips need connections to network infrastructure. That's where Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. CRDO comes in. Credo's products speed up communications among racks of computer servers and storage devices packed into data centers, highlights John Gardner, founder and principal of Blackhawk Wealth Advisors’ Market Insights.

Credo's is seeing fast growth and profit expansion in its active electrical cables (AECs). These cables connect computer servers to networking equipment such as switches or routers. AECs own the sweet spot solution between cheaper copper direct attached cables (DACs) and pricier active optical cables (AOCs).

The AEC chip market will boom to more than $1 billion annually by 2028, up from $68 million in 2023, industry research indicates. The company is experiencing even greater demand than initially projected, driven by AI deployments and deepening customer relationships.

Credo's biggest customer for AECs has been Microsoft Corp. MSFT. Its AECs also connect Nvidia Corp. NVDA-based servers to networks as well as servers using other AI chips, such as those from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD. In addition, Credo recently announced Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Tesla Inc. TSLA as major customers.

Credo is significantly expanding AEC capacity into 2025 as the start of a multi-year adoption cycle for its AEC product. Aside from AECs, Credo makes optical digital signal processors, known as DSPs, and other networking products. It is well positioned to benefit from the explosive growth of data traffic inside the data center that now requires exponentially faster network interconnection speeds to service applications.

CRDO’s recent quarterly earnings report and strong guidance were bullish. Shares of CRDO are timely, with best-in-group technical and fundamental indicators. The stock ranks #1 overall in the Internet-Network Solutions industry group. Institutional accumulation has jumped, and there are now over 500 mutual fund owners – up from 194 in December 2022.

As Credo has gotten more credit for being a leading supplier of components and power for AI data centers, its stock price has been on the rise. It more than doubled in 2024. But AI-driven tailwinds are likely to boost CRDO higher.