Laser Focus World is an industry bedrock—first published in 1965 and still going strong. We publish original articles about cutting-edge advances in lasers, optics, photonics, sensors, and quantum technologies, as well as test and measurement, and the shift currently underway to usher in the photonic integrated circuits, optical interconnects, and copackaged electronics and photonics to deliver the speed and efficiency essential for data centers of the future.

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Editorial Advisory Board

  • Professor Andrea M. Armani, University of Southern California
  • Ruti Ben-Shlomi, Ph.D., LightSolver
  • James Butler, Ph.D., Hamamatsu
  • Natalie Fardian-Melamed, Ph.D., Columbia University
  • Justin Sigley, Ph.D., AmeriCOM
  • Professor Birgit Stiller, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and Leibniz University of Hannover
  • Professor Stephen Sweeney, University of Glasgow
  • Mohan Wang, Ph.D., University of Oxford
  • Professor Xuchen Wang, Harbin Engineering University
  • Professor Stefan Witte, Delft University of Technology

1 Mid-Cap Stock with Promising Prospects and 2 to Think Twice About

SNAP Cover Image

Mid-cap stocks have the best odds of scaling into $100 billion corporations thanks to their tested business models and large addressable markets. But the many opportunities in front of them attract significant competition, spanning from industry behemoths with seemingly infinite resources to small, nimble players with chips on their shoulders.

Luckily for you, our mission at StockStory is to help you make money and avoid losses by sorting the winners from the losers. Keeping that in mind, here is one mid-cap stock with massive growth potential and two best left ignored.

Two Mid-Cap Stocks to Sell:

Snap (SNAP)

Market Cap: $15.21 billion

Founded by Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy, and originally called Picaboo, Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP) is an image centric social media network.

Why Are We Wary of SNAP?

  1. Decision to emphasize platform growth over monetization has contributed to sluggish trends in its average revenue per user
  2. Efficiency has decreased over the last few years as its EBITDA margin fell by 5.2 percentage points
  3. Performance over the past three years shows its incremental sales were much less profitable, as its earnings per share fell by 8.9% annually

Snap’s stock price of $9.06 implies a valuation ratio of 23.7x forward EV/EBITDA. To fully understand why you should be careful with SNAP, check out our full research report (it’s free).

JLL (JLL)

Market Cap: $11.38 billion

Founded in 1999 through the merger of Jones Lang Wootton and LaSalle Partners, JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a company specializing in real estate advisory and investment management services.

Why Do We Avoid JLL?

  1. Large revenue base makes it harder to increase sales quickly, and its annual revenue growth of 5.7% over the last five years was below our standards for the consumer discretionary sector
  2. Low free cash flow margin of 2.1% for the last two years gives it little breathing room, constraining its ability to self-fund growth or return capital to shareholders
  3. Below-average returns on capital indicate management struggled to find compelling investment opportunities, and its shrinking returns suggest its past profit sources are losing steam

JLL is trading at $239.62 per share, or 14.4x forward P/E. Check out our free in-depth research report to learn more about why JLL doesn’t pass our bar.

One Mid-Cap Stock to Watch:

Broadridge (BR)

Market Cap: $27.88 billion

Processing over $10 trillion in equity and fixed income trades daily and managing proxy voting for over 800 million equity positions, Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR) provides technology-driven solutions that power investing, governance, and communications for banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, and public companies.

Why Do We Like BR?

  1. Annual revenue growth of 9.1% over the last five years was superb and indicates its market share increased during this cycle
  2. Incremental sales over the last five years boosted profitability as its annual earnings per share growth of 13% outstripped its revenue performance
  3. Free cash flow margin expanded by 4.4 percentage points over the last five years, providing additional flexibility for investments and share buybacks/dividends

At $237.31 per share, Broadridge trades at 26.7x forward P/E. Is now the time to initiate a position? See for yourself in our comprehensive research report, it’s free.

Stocks We Like Even More

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election sent major indices to all-time highs, but stocks have retraced as investors debate the health of the economy and the potential impact of tariffs.

While this leaves much uncertainty around 2025, a few companies are poised for long-term gains regardless of the political or macroeconomic climate, like our Top 6 Stocks for this week. This is a curated list of our High Quality stocks that have generated a market-beating return of 176% over the last five years.

Stocks that made our list in 2020 include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,545% between March 2020 and March 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+351% five-year return). Find your next big winner with StockStory today for free.

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