Prediction: 3 Stocks That'll Be Worth More Than Berkshire Hathaway 5 Years From Now

The thing is, there’s every reason to believe sales of both of Eli Lilly’s blockbuster drugs will continue growing the longer they’re on the market and the more confidence would-be users gain in what they offer. Goldman Sachs suggests the anti-obesity drug market — which overlaps with the diabetes treatment market — could be worth $100 billion per year by 2030, meaning there’s more than enough room for two leading products in this space. It’s an opportunity with a scope of growth that Berkshire Hathaway just doesn’t seem to have.

And it doesn’t have far to go to become bigger than Buffett’s baby. Eli Lilly’s current market cap is right around $650 billion.

With nothing more than a passing thought, credit card companies like Visa (NYSE: V) don’t seem like particularly high-growth holdings. Payments are simply a reflection of economic activity, after all, and the global economy’s growth rates are relatively limited.

Visa is consistently outpacing overall worldwide spending growth, though, for a couple of reasons. The first of these reasons is simply that cards continue to displace cash and checks as forms of payment.

The U.S. Federal Reserve reports that between 2016 and 2023, cash fell as the preferred form of payments made within the United States, from 31% of transactions then to 16% now, while credit card usage soared from 18% of transactions to 32%. Plastic is simply easier and more convenient to use.

And, given the ongoing growth of e-commerce, in many cases cards are increasingly the only viable means of purchasing certain goods and services. Given the Census Bureau’s estimate that only about 16% of domestic retail spending is currently done online, don’t be surprised to see this proportion continue growing along with card-based transaction sizes.

The same basic dynamics are evident overseas as well, of course.

And the other reason Visa’s been able to reliably drive annual top-line growth between 8% and 15% and even-stronger profit growth? Because it’s not simply resting on its laurels and existing dominance of most of this market (Capital One reports Visa accounts for over 60% of domestic card-based purchase volume).

Visa makes a point of innovating in ways that put more of its plastic in consumers’ hands, and inducing these cardholders to use their cards more often — sometimes without even knowing exactly how its efforts might pay off. Namely, Visa supports several so-called Innovation Centers all over the world, which not only operate somewhat independently of the core company, but even operate independently of one another.

Fun fact: Buffett already owns a stake in Visa. Berkshire Hathaway’s currently sitting on an 8.3 million share/$2.6 billion position in the credit card company, underscoring the argument for holding some in your portfolio as well.

Finally, add Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE: TSM) to your list of stocks that could be worth more than Berkshire Hathaway a mere five years from now.

Granted, it’s got the least distance to travel to surpass Berkshire’s size. Depending on both stocks’ recent performances, in fact, Taiwan Semiconductor may already be the bigger company; its most recent market cap was also in the ballpark of $1 trillion.

It’s still a name worth highlighting, though, if only because it’s one of the market’s more underestimated tickers that could be considerably bigger by 2030 than it is right now.

Just as the same suggests, Taiwan Semiconductor manufactures semiconductors and microchips. That description doesn’t do it justice, however. This company is actually a third-party (“contract”) manufacturer for many of the semiconductor brands you may be more familiar with. Its key customers include Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, just to name a few. All these contractual manufacturing relationships mean Taiwan Semiconductor is technically the world’s biggest chipmaker, and by far the market leader of the advanced semiconductor business.

Some of the tech industry’s titans have tried to wean themselves from their enormous reliance on one single player. But it’s proving tough to do. That’s largely because — thanks to the advent of AI and the data centers it requires — the chip industry is growing faster than these companies can build their own chipmaking foundries. PwC predicts the global semiconductor market is poised to grow more than the twice as fast as the planet’s GDP does between now and 2030, when the industry could be worth more than $1 trillion per year.

This is of course a huge tailwind for the well-positioned Taiwan Semiconductor to plug into.

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James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Goldman Sachs Group, Microsoft, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Prediction: 3 Stocks That’ll Be Worth More Than Berkshire Hathaway 5 Years From Now was originally published by The Motley Fool