What a few days it has been for shareholders of Freelancer Ltd (ASX: FLN) who have seen its share price climb by nearly 19% since the start of the week.
This all came on the back of news that Swiss global financial services giant UBS placed a buy recommendation on the company's shares with a target price of $1.85.
Despite the rapid rise of its share price in the last few days, it is still down year-to-date by over 11% and a fair distance from the price target laid out by UBS.
Analysts at UBS are very bullish on the company and the industry itself. They believe the future addressable market for both small business and consumer crowdsourcing markets could reach as high as $122 billion and $155 billion, respectively.
Being the market-leader in the industry certainly puts Freelancer in a great position to capture the expected explosive growth. This could potentially turn this $730 million dollar company into one worth billions of dollars in the future.
Small businesses may be attracted to using Freelancer's services over SEEK Limited (ASX: SEK) due to the expected savings that they could make. Rather than employ someone, a small business can hire freelance workers on demand at a fraction of the cost.
UBS estimated that a contract that normally costs small businesses $2,000, could be as little as $200 through Freelancer's worldwide network of freelancers.
This could be detrimental to SEEK's growth in the future, if Freelancer does capture a meaningful slice of the short-term contract market. But it is still early days and SEEK is busy with its worldwide expansion, which should fuel its growth for a good number of years.
So I wouldn't sell SEEK just yet. I think its share price still has room to run higher in the next 12 months. Especially with its shares sitting almost 10% off their 52-week high.
Considering the share price of Freelancer is still down over 11% year-to-date, it could make today a good time to invest in the company's share despite the recent rally. If the industry does grow anywhere close to the level that UBS expects, then there will be incredibly strong returns in the future for shareholders.
Freelancer isn't alone in potentially doing well in the future. A couple of other tech shares which could do similar are Aconex Ltd (ASX: ACX) and this fantastic tech share picked out by the experts.
