If any investor has stood the test of time, it is Warren Buffett, and with good reason. For years, the “Oracle of Omaha” has had a rock-star-like presence in the investing world. His annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting draws thousands of loyal fans who are investors. Known for his long buy and hold strategies and his massive portfolio of public and private holdings, Buffett remains one of the preeminent investors in the entire world.

We decided to have a look at his portfolio for stocks that not only look poised to do very well this year and beyond but have been beaten down since the beginning of the year. While Berkshire Hathaway for years always stayed with more conservative ideas, younger portfolio managers, who perhaps understood the nuances of technology and the changing world, have opened up the fund to new ideas.

We found five companies that may surprise investors, and all are outstanding ideas now after 10 weeks of selling to start off 2022. Not only are they in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, but all are Buy rated at top firms across Wall Street. It is important to remember that no single analyst call should ever be used as a basis to buy or sell a stock.

Activision Blizzard

This remains a top gaming pick on Wall Street, and though Microsoft is buying the company, this could be a very solid idea now. Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) develops and publishes online, personal computer (PC), video game console, handheld, mobile and tablet games worldwide. The stock is down a stunning 36% since posting highs in January.

The company develops and publishes interactive entertainment software products through retail channels or digital downloads and downloadable content to a range of gamers. Its legacy franchise Call of Duty continues to be hugely popular.

Microsoft announced plans to acquire the company back in January. Top analysts feel the acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse. Microsoft will acquire Activision Blizzard for $95 per share, in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion, inclusive of Activision Blizzard’s net cash. When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.

Investors receive a 0.58% dividend. The $95 KeyCorp price target compares to the consensus of $92.47. The last Activision Blizzard stock trade for Wednesday was reported at $80.83.

This company is the absolute leader in online shopping, and while not a huge position for Berkshire Hathaway, it is an outstanding buy now. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) serves consumers through retail websites that primarily include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and those offered by third-party sellers.

The company serves developers and enterprises through Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides computing, storage, database, analytics, applications and deployment services that virtually enable various businesses. AWS is also the undisputed leader in the cloud now, and many top analysts see the company expanding and moving up the enterprise information value chain and targeting a larger total addressable market.

Like every year, online sales should continue to grow. Amazon remains the go-to portal for shoppers looking for bargains, as well as a good way for consumers to stay out of brick-and-mortar stores this year. Current shareholders got a pleasant surprise Wednesday as the company announced a 20-for-1 stock split.

The BofA Securities price target is $4,450. The consensus target for Amazon.com stock is $4,039.94. The last trade on Wednesday came in at $2,785, but shares were up big in premarket trading following the split announcement.

Apple

This technology giant has consistently churned out new products that the public loves, and an inexpensive iPhone is one of the newest offerings. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) designs, manufactures and markets consumer electronics and computers, and it has developed its own proprietary iOS and Mac OS X operating systems and related software platform/ecosystem.

Revenues are principally derived from the iPhone line of smartphones, hardware sales of the Macintosh family of notebook and desktop computers, iPad tablets, iPod portable digital music players and the Apple Watch. The company also realizes revenue from software, peripherals, digital media and services.

The tech giant accounts for a stunning 47% of the portfolio. Apple stock investors receive a 0.55% dividend. J.P. Morgan has a $210 price target, while the consensus target is $190. The stock closed trading on Wednesday at $162.95, which was up close to 4% for the day.

Snowflake

This is perhaps the most surprising holding of all and one that the portfolio managers have probably added. Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW) provides cloud-based data platforms in the United States and internationally. Its platform offers Data Cloud, an ecosystem that enables customers to consolidate data into a single source of truth to drive meaningful business insights, build data-driven applications and share data. The platform is used by various organizations of various sizes in a range of industries.
The company created the Data Cloud, a global network where thousands of organizations mobilize data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency and performance. Inside the Data Cloud, organizations unite their siloed data, easily discover and securely share governed data and execute diverse analytic workloads.

Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single and seamless experience across multiple public clouds. Snowflake’s platform is the engine that powers and provides access to the Data Cloud, creating a solution for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development and data sharing.

Snowflake stock has been cut in half, but BTIG Research has a $359 price target. The consensus target is $330.85, and the shares closed on Wednesday at $207.56, up over 8% on the day.

VeriSign

This is another top stock that has been blistered and offers an incredible entry point. VeriSign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) provides domain name registry services and internet infrastructure that enables internet navigation for various recognized domain names worldwide.

The company enables the security, stability and resiliency of internet infrastructure and services, including providing root zone maintainer services, operating two of the 13 internet root servers. It offers registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net domains, which support global e-commerce. The company also has back-end systems for .cc, .gov, .edu and .name domain names, as well as operates distributed servers, networking, security and data integrity services.

The VeriSign stock target price at Baird is $259, which is less than the $266.33 consensus target. Shares closed at $209.59 on Wednesday.

Just because Berkshire Hathaway owns these top companies does not mean they are the right choice for all investors. They all have been hit hard during the recent selling spree, and they are offering outstanding entry points for investors with a long-term outlook.

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