7 Virtual Reality Stocks to Buy for Immersive Gains

Best known for its all-powerful Google ecosystem, Alphabet GOOG offers myriad reasons why you should believe in the enterprise. However, the company more than holds its own as both a VR specialist and one of the augmented reality stocks to buy. For the latter, Google developed smartphone tech that visually directs you to your desired destination.

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As the biggest platform for online-video streaming, Google’s YouTube could become a huge a hub for VR content. YouTube already has a virtual reality app for experiencing content built around the display medium, but there’s still plenty of untapped potential. Virtual reality and augmented reality remain a small portion of the company’s business, but Microsoft has ways to benefit if these new, wearable display formats take off. While the company hasn’t manufactured its own virtual reality headset, it is responsible for the HoloLens augemented reality headsets. Meta’s VR devices, such as the Meta Quest series of headsets, offer standalone VR experiences with emphasis on gaming, social interaction, and enterprise applications. The company’s market capitalization is in the trillions, reflecting its dominant position in social media and growing presence in immersive technologies.

Where do they stand on technology?

Best Buy’s physical stores and ecommerce platforms serve as accessible channels for consumers to explore and purchase VR hardware and accessories. The company’s stable market capitalization, reasonable debt-to-equity ratio, and steady earnings highlight its significance in the retail technology space. Best Buy’s position within the VR supply chain makes it a key player for investors interested in the hardware adoption side of the industry. the 9 biggest virtual reality stocks ZSpace Technologies, Inc. is a provider of commercial augmented reality and virtual reality technology principally in the education market.

Comments from Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division, suggest that the company isn’t seeing much demand from its video game console user base for virtual reality and won’t make VR a big part of its next-generation system. GameStop Corp. is a specialty video game retailer operating across the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Beyond traditional gaming products, GameStop has expanded its offerings to include virtual reality hardware and related accessories such as controllers and gaming headsets. It also sells both new and pre-owned gaming software, digital content, and in-game currencies. This diversification underscores GameStop’s efforts to leverage the increased consumer adoption of VR technologies within the gaming ecosystem.

Sony Group

• The company has developed games exclusively for VR platforms and built headset functionality into some of its titles, but its exposure to virtual reality in the gaming space extends beyond its own efforts.
• Highly immersive consumer VR headsets hit the market in 2016, but high prices and a lack of must-have exclusive content meant that adoption for the new display medium has lagged behind the levels that many analysts anticipated.
• EPAM’s expertise benefits businesses seeking to deploy VR and AR applications for training, remote collaboration, customer engagement, and industrial uses.
• The technology also employs additional factors, such as treadmills or motion controllers, to augment the realistic and interactive mode of the experience.

Qualcomm is another leader in the semiconductor space that has significant exposure to VR. Even phone-based virtual reality needs to have relatively powerful hardware in order to deliver the performance conditions for a pleasant and immersive experiences for users, and the company’s high-end Snapdragon chips help make mobile VR possible. Qualcomm’s chips are also used in many dedicated VR and AR headsets, and some of these solutions have been designed specifically for these new display mediums. Meta Platforms, zSpace, DIH Holding US, The Glimpse Group, and DIH Holding US are the seven Virtual Reality stocks to watch today, according to MarketBeat’s stock screener tool. Virtual reality stocks are shares of publicly traded companies whose primary business involves developing, manufacturing, or supporting virtual reality hardware, software, platforms, or immersive content.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

For one thing, the balance sheet, while not the most terrible example you’ll see, isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring either. Conspicuously, its Altman Z-Score sits at 1.08, implying a distressed enterprise with a higher-than-normal risk of bankruptcy. Also, both its operating and net margins sit deeply in negative territory. Enjoy a month of ad-free browsing, exclusive access to our in-depth report on the Trump tariff and nuclear energy company as well as the revolutionary AI-robotics company, and the upcoming issues of our Premium Readership Newsletter. This isn’t just about making money – it’s about being part of the future.

The chipmaker has a presence in the device hardware and software spaces as well. It looks like the chip giant’s ambitions in the headset-hardware space have been scrapped, but the company has developed high-end 360-degree cameras and software that’s used to broadcast professional sports-content for VR devices. The company’s True View 360-degree technology has been used by sports organizations including the NBA, MLB, NFL, PGA, and the Premier League. The company has been experimenting with integrating virtual reality into its e-commerce platform. The company has developed limited-release kiosks that involve users navigating video game like shopping malls in a virtual-reality world and browsing highlighted items for its Prime Day shopping holiday. Successes on those fronts have made the software giant one of the best-performing mega-cap stocks of the last decade.

Roblox Corporation (NYSE:RBLX)

• Learn how you can make money from the wave of seasoned companies innovating in AI and new AI tech companies.
• Their average price target comes out to $263.12, implying over 10% upside potential.
• The expanded reach of virtual reality technology is transforming industries including gaming, education, healthcare, entertainment, and enterprise solutions.
• Virtual reality has been one of the company’s biggest growth-and-innovation plays outside of its core social media business.
• By the culmination of the forecasted period, the segment should print revenue of $87 billion.
• In addition, several major VR providers in healthcare solutions are integrating 360-degree video features and interactive 3D content to develop effective learning programs for healthcare students and professionals.

Users often experience these offerings with a gaming console or a mobile device. But the company does offer VR versions of its various in-platform worlds, allowing users to experience them with VR systems, such as the Meta Quest 3. Qualcomm isn’t necessarily a household name because its products aren’t usually consumer-facing.

Sony built an empire in the consumer-electronics space, and used its strengths in product categories like music players, speakers, and televisions to build a bigger position in the world of entertainment content. Many of the product categories that helped the Japanese tech company grow over the decades have either been phased out or are no longer particularly lucrative, but it has found plenty of success in the world of video games. The company’s PlayStation gaming division is one of its most important business segments, and no other large video game company has been more aggressive about pushing into VR. VR and AR experiences would be impossible without capable semiconductors, and Intel has long been one of the biggest players in the chip space. The company’s solutions are used in both Apple and Windows-based computers and mobile devices, and the chipmaker has tailored some of its newer processors to support virtual reality capabilities. Oculus headsets now share data directly with Facebook, and the company is incorporating this information into its digital advertising platform and using it to shape the development of new applications for virtual reality.

Meta’s trading activities reflect sustained investor interest, with shares recently trading near significant price levels within a wide $442 to $740 range over the past year. The company boasts a market capitalization exceeding $1.7 trillion, supported by strong fundamentals such as a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio around 29, a consistent price-to-earnings-growth (PEG) ratio near 1.4, and manageable debt levels. With ongoing investments in VR platforms and the metaverse, Meta remains a key stock to watch for those interested in the broader virtual reality space.

It plays an important role in distributing VR devices to end-users across the United States, Canada, and other markets. The company’s product portfolio includes desktops, notebooks, mobile phones, and various VR headsets from different manufacturers. In particular, its cash-to-debt ratio pings at 75.9, ranked better than 90.42% of companies in the hardware industry. Their average price target stands at $11.50, implying nearly 190% upside potential. Operationally, Meta posts a solid three-year revenue growth rate of 20.6% and an impressive trailing-year net margin of 19.9%.

Investors should approach the space with the understanding that a boom for the technology could be a decade away — and that outcome isn’t guaranteed. Virtual reality has tremendous potential, and it could turn into a lucrative market that delivers great performance for investors with well-informed approaches and expectations. The PlayStation VR currently stands as the best-selling high-end VR device, illustrating that video game content is a big driving factor in adoption for virtual reality. Research by TrendForce suggests that Sony shipped 36.7% of total non-phone VR headsets in 2018 and had a 43% of headset shipments in 2019 — making it the far-and-away market leader in the category. While Microsoft has been hesitant to pursue virtual reality for its Xbox platform, Sony eagerly jumped into the space — and it’s had impressive success in the market. PlayStation VR launched in 2016, and the company debuted a slightly updated version of the device the following year.