A hub for managing customer relationships

HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) is an industry leader for customer relationship management (CRM) in the small-business niche. The CRM market is expected to grow at 13.3% per year, topping $170 billion by 2030, according to Precedence Research.

HubSpot’s platform includes productivity software for marketing, sales and customer service, and solutions for content management, data integration and workflow automation.

Collectively, these tools help clients attract visitors with engaging websites, social media content and marketing material, then convert those visitors into loyal customers. HubSpot’s freemium model and focus on smaller businesses help it land clients, and its tiered pricing structure encourages clients to expand use over time.

In 2021, HubSpot’s revenue soared 47% to $1.3 billion, and in its first quarter of 2022, revenue rose 41%. In that first quarter, the company increased its customer base by 26%, and the average subscription revenue per customer climbed 12%, showing the efficacy of management’s land-and-expand growth strategy.

HubSpot’s stock recently traded at a price-to-sales ratio of 10.5, well below its historical average of 15.4. That’s why this growth stock looks like a bargain. (The Motley Fool owns shares of HubSpot.)

Ask the Fool

Q. When would be a good time for me to buy bonds? – B.B., Los Alamos, New Mexico

A. The answer to that question will vary from person to person, depending on circumstances and temperament.

Those who can handle some risk and who have many years – if not decades – before retirement might choose to focus solely on stocks, as stocks have outperformed bonds over most long periods.

Still, even risk-takers might want to include some bonds in their portfolios for diversification, as bonds sometimes rise in value when the stock market falls – though it doesn’t always work that way.

For example, the stock market is down sharply this year, and the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index was recently down too – by about 12%.

There are many kinds of bonds, often issued by governments or corporations, with different rates and terms.

While U.S. government bonds are among the safest, they tend to offer lower interest rates than corporate bonds.

If you expect interest rates to rise for a while, you might invest in shorter-term bonds instead of getting locked into a low rate for a long time.

Also consider the U.S. Treasury’s “I-bonds,” which feature inflation-adjusted interest rates.

The Series I savings bond’s rate was recently 9.62%!

Q. What good books cover stock market history? – H.D., Murfreesboro, Tennessee

A. Check out Peter L. Bernstein’s “Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street” (Wiley, $20), “A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation” by Scott Nations (William Morrow, $18) and “A History of the Global Stock Market: From Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley” by B. Mark Smith (University of Chicago Press, $17.50).

My Smartest Investment

My smartest investment was buying Canadian bank stocks and leaving them alone for years and years. – Rob, online

The Fool responds: That’s how lots of investors have made their smartest investments – parking their money in healthy and growing companies and leaving it alone for years.

Here’s a familiar example from the United States: If you invested in Microsoft decades ago and hung on to your shares for a few years, you could have done well – possibly tripling your money, or even increasing it tenfold (or much more).

Even if you bought only 10 years ago and hung on for a few years, you could have doubled your money.

But those who bought, say, 25 years ago and hung on could have seen an initial $10,000 investment turn into more than $180,000 – or into about $260,000 if they reinvested dividends into additional shares of stock.

Bank stocks can be great long-term investments, as long as the banks in question are well-managed, not taking on too much risk in their lending.

Their fortunes can rise and fall with interest rates, but they’re also well-regulated, required to take various steps to reduce their risk of failure.

We tend to think of banks as just lending money and paying interest on deposits, but many banks also make lots of money via investment banking activities, such as underwriting corporate bonds and stock.