Invest In The Hidden Companies Behind The $91 Billion Drone Revolution

Imagine a world where you can get anything you want, when you want it, all with the click of a mouse. Well, maybe that’s not too tough to fathom thanks to the e-commerce revolution and streaming content at your fingertips.

#-ad_banner-#But consider a situation that happened to a good friend of mine recently — I’m not just making this up for a good story.

My friend, who I’ll call Steven, made it home after a treacherous commute through Austin traffic. His wife greeted him at the door and walked him to the dining room where, to his surprise, Steven’s in-laws sat around a perfectly-set table.

As it turned out, Steven forgot that his wife offered to host his father-in-law’s birthday dinner.


There was no getting out of this pickle for Steven. He did what many of us have probably done before and quickly scribbled his signature on the bottom of the birthday card that his wife picked up earlier in the day.

Honorable? No.

Are many of us guilty of doing the same? Possibly.

Now consider the same scenario. But instead of signing his name at the bottom of his father-in-law’s birthday card, Steven sneaks off to the bathroom. He orders a gift from his smartphone, and within half an hour, the gift is dropped off at the front door.

There is one company that is working on disrupting the very way things are delivered and aiming to solve these one-off problems by delivering products to your doorstep in 30 minutes or less. If that sounds farfetched, think again. But rather than relying on traditional methods of shipping, it’ll be accomplished with drones.

The company pushing for this is — you guessed it — Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). The company is already on the 9th generation of its delivery drone prototype for the service coined “Amazon Prime Air.” These drones are capable of flying at speeds of up to 50mph and can carry up to five pounds — which covers more than 80% of Amazon’s inventory.

But we won’t be living in this brave new world in the next year or two. With commercial drone usage and technology advancing far faster than the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) can come up with regulations, it’s been a slow moving process.

There are companies that have been able to profit from the revolutionary advances in drone technology, but you’ll have to look to the defense sector — companies like Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). Other companies, such as Amazon and Google, are also looking into the ways that drones can be useful to their business. And they’re not alone.

This brings up an important point of validation: demand is there. It’s just a matter of time before drones become commercially viable.

So how do you get ahead of this technological shift and begin profiting today?

I took a page out of my colleague Andy Obermueller’s book. In his premium advisory, Game-Changing Stocks, he has one overarching investment theme: invest in companies that are disrupting their industry. A great example of Andy’s ideas in action can be seen here in a recent issue of StreetAuthority Daily.

That means, while I could tell you “buy Amazon today,” I’m not confident that their drone delivery service will come to fruition in the near-term.

But that doesn’t mean the surge in drone technology can’t be a profitable sector. In fact, drone usage for both commercial and military use is a booming market.

The Teal Group — an aerospace and defense market research firm — issued a report earlier this year estimating that over $6.4 billion is currently being spent each year on drone technology. By 2024, the group estimates this will be a $91 billion industry.

Instead of investing directly in companies that could benefit from drones, I dug a little deeper and found a unique investing angle on this burgeoning sector — companies that make individual components used on the drones.

This takes the guesswork out of predicting exactly which companies stand to benefit from the integration of drone technology, driving us straight to the source.

Here are a few solid companies that are responsible for individual components used in drones:

Four Drone Component Makers To Watch
Company Description Market Capitalization
IXYS Corp. (Nasdaq: IXYS) Supplies power chip sets & controllers used in drones $383 Million
InvenSense, Inc. (NYSE: INVN) Supplies motion tracking components used in smartphones and drones $1.46 Billion
Ambarella, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMBA) Supplies chips used for HD video capture and delivery for cameras $1.54 Billion
TransDigm Group Incorporated (NYSE: TDG) Supplies multiple components used in commercial & military drones $10.37 Billion


These are all worthy candidates of further research, but my personal favorite is Invensense (NYSE: INVN). InvenSense builds micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes used in smart-phones (yes even the iPhone 6), video games, GPS devices and drones. Though they say they’re selling components for commercial drones, the lion’s share of their revenue comes from the mobile market.

INVN has been investing heavily in research & development and, as a result, didn’t post a profit in their last fiscal year. With some of these high-growth companies, this is the norm.

What I look for is significant revenue growth, signaling market-wide acceptance of their offerings. INVN has an extremely impressive five-year average revenue growth rate of 54%.

Beyond that the company sports a year-to-date gross margin of 42%, with a long-term goal of boosting that to north of 50%. High revenue growth mixed with strong gross margins signals that if commercial drones take off, then INVN will be raking in profit hand over fist.

It’s been an extremely volatile stock as of late. INVN stock sold off heavily a couple of months ago after missing analyst expectations. So I would take a word of Andy Obermueller’s advice and look at INVN as a potential addition to the portion of your portfolio devoted to game-changing ideas.

If you’d like to hear about other game-changing investment opportunities, take a second to check out Andy Obermueller’s newest report “The 11 Most Shocking Investment Predictions for 2015.” In it he discloses his top game-changing innovations for 2015 — including the same kinds of ideas that have delivered 92%… 293%… even 310% gains for investors in the past. To learn more about these shocking predictions and others that could make early investors a killing, follow this link.