Photo by GoodLifeStudio/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images Upwork (NASDAQ: UPWK ) is the largest freelance marketplace provider in the world. Global trends bring tremendous growth opportunities for the business. Analysts expect double digit CAGR for upcoming decade. Our short-term strategy brings at least 21% annualized return. The gig economy is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. People prefer to work as a freelancer as it allows them to be able to manage their time freely. In 2020 the industry enjoyed tremendous tailwinds as lots of people lost their jobs and were urged to stay at home. Global digitalization and spread of internet services are huge contributing factors for the industry as employers get a chance to hire employees from international markets and find perfect workers for their companies. Employers which are located in a high-income country always face a high labor cost problem, however freelance community solves this issue as it gives an opportunity to hire a specialist with a cheaper wage from a low-income country. At the same time, employees get an opportunity to find a job which perfectly fits with their abilities and interests. It is also creating an opportunity for a low-income country specialist to get high wages coming from developed countries. So it is also solving global inequality issue as low-income countries’ employees “import” tremendous amounts of money from abroad by exporting services. Covid 19 brought tremendous tailwinds to the industry, however even pre-pandemic trends were very promising for industry players. Social surveys indicate that 67% of regular full-time employees are intended to leave their traditional workplaces for a freelance job. At the same time, employers also start to seek talents from freelance communities as 30% of Fortune 500 companies are using the network to find employees. It is also expected that the gig economy will grow 3 times faster than traditional workforce. It is worth mentioning that the gig workforce earned $1.7 trillion in 2020, while 78% of survey participants said that they will increase their gig services in 2021. So it is clear that gig economy is revolutionizing traditional workforce industry and is proposing attractive growth opportunities for stock investors. One of the leaders of the industry is Upwork which is the largest freelance platform by GSV in the world. When you search a freelance job or a freelancer to hire for you project in google.com one of the first links you see is upwork.com. The website has an average 38 million visits per month, while about 21% of these visits are from the USA. About 72.5% of visitors enter the website directly – without searches, which means that the company has already established a well-known brand and has a loyal user base. Another factor which proves high loyalty of users is the Client Spend Retention Rate of 106% . The rate measures spend retention of clients who were Upwork users more than 13 months. Visits by searches represent 15.6% of total visits; however, even in this case, the majority […]
