Revenge of the blue chips: Shares of legacy stocks are beating their disruptors this year

Published Fri, Jun 4 20211:39 PM EDTUpdated Fri, Jun 4 20212:18 PM EDT

Legacy companies are having the last laugh against their disruptor counterparts in 2021. Yet, Wall Street expects the innovation stocks will retake the lead again eventually. After getting trounced in recent years, incumbent stocks like Ford , Disney and Goldman Sachs are beating their competitors Tesla , Netflix and PayPal , respectively, this year. Big-box retailer Walmart is even neck and neck with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon in 2021. Shares of Ford are up nearly 82% this year, while Tesla's stock has fallen about 15%. Goldman Sachs has rallied about 48% since January, and PayPal is up just 12%. Disney is down 2.7%, less than streaming giant Netflix, which is 8% in the red. Walmart has dipped 1.7% year to date. E-commerce giant Amazon, meanwhile, has fallen 2.15% in 2021. The outperformance of the so-called incumbents comes amid a rotation this year out of growth stocks due to an inflation overhang, and how the Federal Reserve might respond to rising prices. Technology investors worry the central bank could roll back its easy policies and let interest rates rise. This would knock the growth sector, which relies heavily on borrowing money for cheap to fund long-term investments and innovations. Low rates also help make their high valuations more tolerable to investors. "As for the rotational part, a lot has to do with the direction of interest rates with up good for value, down good for growth," Bleakley Advisory Group chief investment officer Peter Boockvar told CNBC. Investors have also been rewarding stocks that benefit from the economic reopening. Investors expect people will buy cars, travel to Disney's theme parks and start returning to in-person shopping as the Covid-19 vaccine rollout continues. Beating disruptors at their own game Tesla — which popularized electric vehicles — is facing real competition in the space from the incumbents while juggling negative headlines of its own. The company also seems to be losing some of its grip on the hot EV market. Ford popped 5% on Thursday after reporting that electric vehicle sales rose 184% year-over-year in May to 10,364 vehicles. The automaker said it has been receiving a "massive" number of reservations for its all-electric F-150 Lightning in the past two weeks, totaling over 70,000 trucks. "For Ford, they are impressing people with their EV rollout while Tesla backs off from its extreme valuation in the growth to value rotation," Boockvar added. Ford also unveiled Thursday a new compact pickup truck called Maverick, which Ford expects to go on sale by the end of the year. The company hopes the addition to its truck lineup will attract more West Coast customers. Goldman Sachs benefited from the rotation into value groups, like financials. The bank has gotten a boost from increasing capital markets activity, while PayPal's market multiple gets questioned, Boockvar said. The streaming wars between Disney and Netflix heated up this year, after Disney+ topped 100 million subscribers just 16 months after it launched. Meanwhile, Netflix saw a dramatic subscriber slowdown in the fiscal second quarter , missing estimates by more than 2 million subscribers. Netflix said the slowdown in subscriber numbers could be blamed on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which forced the company to delay some of its big-name shows and films. In turn, Disney is benefiting this year as its parks reopened following closures during the pandemic. Lastly, the Walmart and Amazon battle is neck and neck. Both stocks are trading around the flatline for the year after impressive returns in 2020 (Amazon rose 76.3% and Walmart rallied 21.3%). Amazon was a major beneficiary of the pandemic, but Walmart adapted quickly and saw sales surge. Walmart reported last month strong grocery sales and e-commerce growth and raised its outlook for the year. "The Walmart vs. Amazon story is now an intense competitive battle," Boockvar said. Reversal ahead? Despite the first half's underperformance, Wall Street is expecting its disruptor darlings to return to favor in the next year. All of the so-called disruptors have average 12-month price targets well above their incumbent counterparts, according to FactSet. Wall Street expects Ford to drop 7.1% in the next 12 months, while Tesla is forecast to gain 16.8%, according to the average analyst forecast collected by FactSet. Piper Sandler said the aforementioned headlines about Tesla losing EV market share is "more nuanced" than many investors appreciate, while keeping its $1,200 per share price target on the stock. "We still think investors should use sell-offs to build positions," Piper Sandler senior research analyst Alexander Potter said. Goldman Sachs is estimated to gain a mere 1%, while PayPal is expected to rally 22% in the next year, FactSet data shows. Loop Capital Markets told clients despite PayPal's stellar first quarter earnings and guidance raise, "the path forward seems even brighter," analyst Kenneth Hill said. "We like the cadence of product development in the business and how that is translating to greater engagement and more consistent earnings growth," he added. The firm has a $333 per share price target on PayPal's stock. Disney is forecast to gain about 17.4% in the next 12 months, while Netflix is estimated to add 25.9% to its price, according to FactSet. Stifel — which upgraded Netflix to buy after the streaming company's earnings in April — expects Netflix to experience mid-teens revenue growth with rising operating margins and significant free cash flow generation. "We expect a 3- to-9 month period of working through the remaining COVID comp issues followed by a multi-year period in which the stock can compound at a rate consistent with revenue growth," Stifel analyst Scott Devitt said. Analysts see Walmart gaining 15.3% in a year, but Amazon is estimated to gain 33.6% in the next 12 months, per FactSet. Morgan Stanley — which has a $4,500 per share price target on Amazon — said that Amazon is prepping for a broad one-day shipping offering that will further shift the e-commerce goal posts and raise customer expectations. "Increased same-day expectations would only further raise the cost to compete within e-commerce and raise the value of AMZN's growing in-house delivery network," Morgan Stanley equity analyst Brian Nowak told clients. — with reporting from CNBC's Nate Rattner and Michael Bloom.

Visitors watch fireworks explode over the Shanghai Disneyland castle at an event to mark the first anniversary of the opening of the park.

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Legacy companies are having the last laugh against their disruptor counterparts in 2021. Yet, Wall Street expects the innovation stocks will retake the lead again eventually.

After getting trounced in recent years, incumbent stocks like Ford, Disney and Goldman Sachs are beating their competitors Tesla, Netflix and PayPal, respectively, this year. Big-box retailer Walmart is even neck and neck with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon in 2021.