News that Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug Remdesivir is delivering promising results in treating COVID-19 has given global markets a boost on Friday.
I believe the development of a successful treatment for the virus could be just what this bull market needs to take it to the next level.
And while it remains early days, I think now would be a good time to look at the shares you won't want to miss out on when the bull market roars.
Three top shares that I like are listed below:
Altium Limited (ASX: ALU)
With the Internet of Things (IoT) market forecast by Statista to grow from US$212 billion in 2019 to US$1.6 trillion in 2025, I think Altium is perfectly positioned for growth over the next five years. This is because IoT devices will almost always have printed circuit boards (PCB) inside them. This is particularly positive for Altium due to its industry-leading PCB design software platform – Altium Designer. I expect demand for its software platform to grow rapidly over the next decade and drive strong earnings growth as its scales. This could make it worth taking advantage of its share price weakness over the last couple of months.
Appen Ltd (ASX: APX)
Another share to consider buying before the market rebounds is Appen. It is a fast-growing developer of high-quality, human-annotated training data for machine learning and artificial intelligence. It recently released a business update which revealed that it remains on target to achieve its guidance for FY 2020 despite the pandemic. This will mean full year underlying EBITDA in the range $125 million to $130 million. Which represents a 23.8% to 28.7% increase on FY 2019's underlying EBITDA of $101 million. Given the importance of these markets for businesses, I expect more strong growth over the next decade.
Xero Limited (ASX: XRO)
A final option to snap up before it is too late is Xero. It is a cloud-based business and accounting software provider with enormous growth potential. This is thanks to its high quality product offering in a market which continues to grow in size due to the seismic shift to online accounting. In its half year results presentation, the company estimated that less than 20% of the global (English-speaking) accounting market was using cloud-based products. This means there is a significant market opportunity for Xero to capture over the next decade.
