builders

Identifying growing companies with ample room for expansion is how you spot tomorrow’s winners. The key is to maintain a long-term perspective because the whims of market sentiment in the short term will always try to trick you into selling your shares too early.

As long as the business continues to execute and grow, you’ll be on the path to building wealth. Let’s look at two companies that are still in the early stages of their long-term growth and can help you build wealth for retirement.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Dutch Bros

One way to identify promising wealth builders is to look at emerging brands that are resonating with a new generation of consumers. Dutch Bros (BROS -1.59%) has tailored its marketing strategy around winning over Gen Z, and it’s driving impressive growth for this specialty beverage chain.

Dutch Bros was founded in 1992, so it’s not an unproven business concept. In fact, it’s outperforming industry leader Starbucks. Dutch Bros’ same-shop sales grew 6% year over year in the most recent quarter, while Starbucks continues to struggle with declining comparable sales.

Dutch Bros’ menu is centered around coffee, but also includes a flavorful range of soda, smoothies, and other drinks. It uses clever marketing tactics to build a loyal following. For example, the company ran a limited-time promotion in May where customers received matching friendship bracelets for purchasing at least two drinks.

Giving away free items has resonated with a younger crowd and made this brand stand out in a competitive market. Its success building a loyal customer base can be seen through its loyalty program, which drove 72% of systemwide transactions in the second quarter.

Dutch Bros ended the last quarter with 1,043 shops across 19 states, but management believes it can reach 7,000 over the long term. Investors should be rewarded as it continues to expand, since the company is already turning a profit of $89 million on $1.4 billion of revenue on a trailing-12-month basis. This margin will continue to grow as the business scales, driving robust earnings growth to support market-beating shareholder returns.

2. Shopify

Starting a business has never been easier than it is today thanks to Shopify (SHOP 1.66%). With a relatively affordable subscription, business owners can quickly set up an online storefront to connect with shoppers worldwide. The affordability, ease of use, and powerful suite of tools have built a solid competitive moat around Shopify that should ensure many years of growth for shareholders.

Subscription revenue grew 16% year over year in the second quarter, reaching $656 million. However, its merchant solutions business grew 36% year over year, and this is where Shopify’s business model shines. Merchant solutions revenue includes payment processing, capital lending, and shipping services. This comprised 75% of Shopify’s total revenue.

This means that Shopify has built its business model around the success of its customers. If merchants are not successful growing their business, Shopify won’t grow either. This incentivizes management to innovate not just to boost its own bottom line, but the bottom line of the businesses that pay for a Shopify subscription.

Shopify is also expanding beyond e-commerce with its point-of-sale offering. Shopify Point of Sale saw its gross merchandise volume increase by 29% year over year in Q2. It was recently recognized as a leader in point-of-sale software by IDC. This ultimately positions Shopify to compete in the $28 trillion global retail market, according to Statista.

Shopify can grow for a long time. Investors expect the company to capitalize on this massive addressable market, as the stock currently trades at 100 times this year’s consensus earnings estimate. The stock is closing in on a new all-time high and should deliver superior compounding returns for years to come.

Investors can find success in the stock market by sticking with companies that consistently report strong growth in revenues. This is a simple strategy that, when applied across a diversified portfolio of growth stocks, can lead to outstanding returns over a decade or more.

The important thing is to follow the growth of the business, not the short-term volatility in the share price. There’s a high correlation between a company’s growth and stock performance over many years.

With that in mind, let’s look at two stocks that could be easy wealth builders for a long-term investor.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. MercadoLibre

The Latin American e-commerce market is booming. It is a large population surpassing 650 million people, which is fueling strong growth for MercadoLibre (MELI 0.00%). The company offers an online marketplace where merchants can sell goods to millions of buyers, but it also generates revenue from mobile payments, advertising, and other fintech services.

Over the last 10 years, the company’s revenue has grown at a compound annual rate of more than 40%, sending the stock up 2,000%. MercadoLibre continues to report high rates of growth as it continues to invest in improving the customer experience, such as lowering prices, increasing shipping speeds, and rolling out new products like credit cards. Revenue reached nearly $6.8 billion in its second quarter 2025, representing a year-over-year increase of 34%.

MercadoLibre has multiple levers to pull to sustain high rates of growth. It recently reduced shipping and seller fees, incentivizing sellers to also reduce their selling prices. This move shows how it is leveraging its massive scale as the dominant e-commerce company in Latin America to gain share and grow its customer base.

Lower fees for sellers are expected to increase the selection of goods offered on the marketplace, which, in turn, will drive higher customer satisfaction and more frequent shopping.

Additionally, the Mercado Pago credit business has been a fast-growing source of revenue in recent years and an attractive long-term opportunity to win more customers. The company’s credit portfolio roughly doubled in Q2 over the year-ago quarter, indicating strong adoption of its credit card product.

The integration of financial services like credit cards, paired with its commerce business, helps create a tighter ecosystem of services that drives customer loyalty. With just 68 million monthly active users, MercadoLibre has an enormous runway to grow its fintech business.

MercadoLibre is tapping into a huge opportunity, helping millions of people in the region get access to basic financial services. The compounding growth of this business makes it an excellent buy-and-hold stock to build wealth for retirement.

2. Coupang

Coupang (CPNG 0.63%) has a lot of similarities to Amazon. It is revolutionizing e-commerce in South Korea and Taiwan, where it’s showing strong growth potential outside its home market in Korea. It might seem challenging for another e-commerce juggernaut to rise under Amazon’s shadow, but Coupang has advantages.

Coupang’s trailing-12-month revenue has increased 62% over the three years to $32 billion. Quarterly revenue increased by 19% year over year in Q2 on a constant-currency basis. The company’s profitability also continues to trend in a positive direction, with gross profit, operating income, and earnings per share increasing over the year-ago quarter. Strong financial results pushed the stock up 30% year to date.

This growth reflects execution at expanding product selection, and investing in automation to improve delivery speed. It offers same-day delivery across a massive selection of products to millions of customers living in densely populated cities, which is the basis of its competitive advantage.

One area of the business that indicates a lot of growth potential is its Developing Offerings. This includes grocery delivery and streaming entertainment. Revenue from these items grew 33% year over year — significantly faster than its product commerce. This reflects more customers continuing to spend more with Coupang after initially purchasing products through its e-commerce business.

Moreover, management indicated in the last earnings report that its Developing Offerings in Taiwan are growing faster than anticipated. This is a great sign that its business model could find more markets outside of South Korea, where it can be successful and deliver returns for shareholders.

Coupang is essentially becoming the default app that 24 million active customers rely on for buying goods, food, and digital entertainment. Its record of consistently reporting high-double-digit growth, with promising international expansion potential, could make this a huge winner for investors over the long term.

Thousands of US workers hit the picket line at three plants in Illinois and Missouri.

Thousands of workers at Boeing plants across the United States that develop military aircraft and weapons have gone on strike.

The strike began Monday at Boeing facilities in St Louis and St Charles, Missouri, as well as Mascoutah, Illinois, after failed negotiations over wage increases and other provisions of a new contract.

About 3,200 local members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted Sunday to reject a modified four-year labour agreement, the union said.

“IAM District 837 members build the aircraft and defense systems that keep our country safe,” Sam Cicinelli, the general vice president of the union’s Midwest division, said in a statement. “They deserve nothing less than a contract that keeps their families secure and recognizes their unmatched expertise.”

The vote followed a weeklong cooling-off period after the workers rejected an earlier proposed contract, which included a 20 percent wage increase over four years and $5,000 ratification bonuses.

Boeing warned over the weekend that it anticipated the strike after workers rejected its latest offer, which did not further boost the proposed wage hike. However, the proposal removed a scheduling provision that would have affected workers’ ability to earn overtime pay.

“We’re disappointed our employees rejected an offer that featured 40 percent average wage growth and resolved their primary issue on alternative work schedules,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing Air Dominance vice president and general manager, and senior St Louis site executive.

“We are prepared for a strike and have fully implemented our contingency plan to ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.”

Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security business accounts for more than one-third of the company’s revenue. But Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told analysts last week that the impact from a strike by the machinists who build fighter jets, weapons systems and the US Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned aircraft would be much less than a walkout last year by 33,000 workers who assemble the company’s commercial jetliners.

“The order of magnitude of this is much, much less than what we saw last fall,” Ortberg said. “So we’ll manage through this. I wouldn’t worry too much about the implications of the strike.”

The 2024 strike shut down Boeing’s factories in Washington state for more than seven weeks at a bleak time for the company. Boeing came under several federal investigations last year after a door plug blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

The Federal Aviation Administration put limits on Boeing plane production that it said would last until the agency felt confident about manufacturing quality safeguards at the company. The door-plug incident renewed concerns about the safety of the 737 Max. Two of the planes crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.

Ortberg told analysts that the company has slowly worked its way up to an FAA-set 737 Max production cap of 38 per month and expects to ask regulators later this year for permission to go beyond it.

Last week, Boeing reported that its second-quarter revenue had improved and its losses had narrowed. The company lost $611m in the second quarter, compared to a loss of $1.44bn during the same period last year.

Boeing’s stock tumbled on the news of the strike. Trending downwards earlier in the day, it has since been trending upwards, but is still below the market open by 0.26 percent as of 12:30pm ET (16:30 GMT).