10 Best Growth Stocks to Buy for the Long Term

Growth stocks benefited from excitement around the artificial intelligence buildout in 2025. But as anxiety about AI disruption took hold, investors shifted to the value category in 2026.

Over the past 12 months, the Morningstar US Growth Market Index rose 6.8%, while the Morningstar US Value Market Index gained 20.5%. “Risk-off sentiment in growth stocks sent investors to the perceived safety of value stocks,” says Morningstar Chief US Market Strategist Dave Sekera in his September stock market outlook. “The combination of a retreat in the growth category while also increasing a number of our valuations has brought the growth category down to a 17% discount from our fair values. Market returns have brought the value category in line with our valuations.”

Quality growth stocks, at a discount, can find a place in a balanced portfolio. Sekera recommends investors begin overweighting the growth category and underweighting the value category, while remaining market weight in the core category.

10 Best Growth Stocks to Buy for the Long Term

The 10 most undervalued growth stocks from Morningstar’s Best Companies to Own list as of Sept. 17, 2026, were:

1. Ferrovial FER
2. SAP SAP
3. TransDigm Group TDG
4. Bentley Systems BSY
5. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing TSM
6. Autodesk ADSK
7. Ecolab ECL
8. MSCI MSCI
9. AstraZeneca AZN
10. Chipotle CMG

To come up with our list of the best growth stocks to buy for the long term, we screened for:

• Stocks that land in the growth portion of the
  Morningstar Style Box
  .
• Stocks from companies included on Morningstar’s list of the Best Companies to Own. Companies on this list have wide
  Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings
  and predictable cash flows, and they are run by management teams that make smart capital-allocation decisions.
• Stocks that are undervalued, as measured by Morningstar’s
  fair value estimate
  .

Here’s a little more about each of these growth stocks for the long term, including commentary from the Morningstar analysts who cover each company. All data is as of Sept. 17, 2026.

Ferrovial

• Morningstar
  Price/Fair Value
  : 0.60
• Morningstar
  Uncertainty Rating
  : Low
• Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
• Morningstar
  Capital Allocation Rating
  : Exemplary
• Industry: Engineering and Construction

Ferrovial is the most affordable stock on our list of the best growth stocks to buy. This global transportation infrastructure investor, developer, and operator has a strong presence in North American toll roads. The stock is trading at a 40% discount to our fair value estimate of $91 per share.

Ferrovial makes the bulk of its earnings by investing in, designing, building, and operating transport infrastructure. Its primary asset is its stake in the 99-year lease to operate the 407 Express Toll Route that traverses the greater Toronto area. In recent years, Ferrovial has meaningfully shifted its portfolio toward North American assets, partly funded by exiting UK airports (Heathrow Airport and AGS), hoping to take advantage of superior asset economics and more lenient regulation than in Europe and a larger pipeline of public/private partnerships. We estimate roughly 85% of Ferrovial’s value is derived from its toll roads, 9% from airports, and the balance from construction businesses.

Rotating assets in its portfolio is key to ongoing shareholder value creation; Ferrovial seeks to sell mature assets, such as its stake in Heathrow Airport, to fund new projects such as the New Terminal One at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Ferrovial focuses on greenfield and yellowfield high-complexity concessions in areas with good economic prospects, where it believes it can earn a “pioneer premium” and grow tariffs and traffic ahead of inflation. It prefers to source deals through bilateral negotiations rather than competitive bidding, and it underwrites projects with at least a double-digit post-tax equity internal rate of return. The characteristics it looks for include long-term, back-end-weighted cash flows and the flexibility to set toll rates as it pleases. It believes its operational experience in the space enables it to employ tools such as dynamic pricing to maximize the asset’s value once operational.

Ferrovial operates three construction businesses, Ferrovial Construction (formerly Ferrovial Agroman), Webber, and Budimex, a listed Polish engineering, procurement, and construction firm. These businesses support their concessions business over the entire project lifecycle, and Ferrovial Construction explicitly targets 25% of revenue to come from toll roads and airports. For instance, Ferrovial Construction is managing the project management office for JFK’s New Terminal One and providing construction oversight.

Read more about Ferrovial here.

SAP

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.71
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
• Industry: Software—Application

SAP was founded in Germany in 1972 by former IBM employees and is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software. The stock is trading at a 29% discount to our fair value estimate of $302 per share.

SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software and global market leader in enterprise resource planning software. The company earns revenue by selling subscriptions for its various cloud-based software-as-a-service products as well as licenses and maintenance fees for on-premises software, which are now being largely phased out. Besides its core ERP products such as S/4HANA, SAP offers well-known back-office software products such as Concur for travel and expense management and Ariba for procurement.

The company was late to the cloud for ERP software but now offers two compelling products: RISE with SAP, which is the private-cloud edition designed for SAP’s large enterprise customers that are transitioning from their SAP on-premises ERP (ECC) to SAP S/4HANA; and GROW with SAP, which is the public cloud edition that is designed for midmarket companies with less complex requirements. We think GROW with SAP fills an important void in SAP’s product offering, as previously SAP’s ERP software was often unattractive to smaller customers given the implementation costs were just too high. With the launch of these new products, cloud revenue is growing swiftly, and SAP is capturing many new midmarket customers.

SAP is following a land and expand strategy, which is common in the enterprise software market. RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP are the land products, after which the company then upsells and cross-sells more SAP products to these customers, which is much easier in a cloud-based model. The company has yet to release its latest long-term ambitions but expects revenue growth to accelerate at least through 2027, along with rising margins as the cloud business reaches efficient scale.

Read more about SAP here.

TransDigm Group

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.72
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Mid Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
• Industry: Aerospace and Defense

Aerospace and defense company TransDigm is next on our list of best growth stocks to buy. TransDigm manufactures and services a broad set of specialized parts for commercial and military aircraft. The firm is organized into three segments: power and control, airframes, and a small nonaviation segment that serves mostly off-road vehicles and mining equipment. The stock is 28% undervalued relative to our fair value estimate of $1500 per share.

TransDigm is a holding company with a clear, consistent strategy: Acquire and operate businesses that supply proprietary and highly engineered aerospace components with high aftermarket demand. Its businesses manufacture and sell parts for aircraft, like ignition systems, pumps, actuators, flight controls, and cabin equipment, among other things. Since TransDigm is the only provider of many such products, it has significant pricing power. The firm also operates with a high degree of financial leverage to amplify operating results.

This strategy works because potentially competing parts would have to be licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to be identical to the original product. Since TransDigm’s designs are proprietary, it is challenging for would-be competitors to prove that their design is identical, and because the parts generally do not cost much compared with the value of the overall aircraft, competitors don’t bother trying to replicate them. These barriers to entry allow TransDigm to extract value from required maintenance and enable the firm to aggressively price its spare parts over the lifecycle of the aircraft that use them.

TransDigm had its IPO in 2006, after 13 years of private ownership, and it still uses classic private equity strategies of creating value: It aims to improve the operations of its target companies by increasing prices and productivity, and it encourages employees to generate new business. TransDigm is highly decentralized and has numerous business units. It encourages business unit leaders to think like owners by setting aggressive targets for managers and allowing them to achieve these goals however they choose.

In fiscal 2024, TransDigm’s revenue was just over 6% of Boeing’s and Airbus’ combined cost of goods sold (leaving aside all the airlines they service in the aftermarket), illustrating what a small part of the overall industry it still represents, even with hundreds of stock-keeping units across dozens of subsidiaries.

Read more about TransDigm here.

Bentley Systems

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.83
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Small Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
• Industry: Software—Application

Bentley Systems is a software vendor that caters to civil engineers, constructors, and geospatial professionals by enabling design, simulation, and data management of infrastructure assets such as roads and bridges. Bentley currently trades at a 17% discount to our fair value estimate of $43 per share.

After successfully carving out a niche in computer-aided design with its construction-oriented software, MicroStation, Bentley Systems has been continuously expanding its family of offerings beyond the public works and utilities vertical to broaden its total addressable market. We find the opportunities in the resources sector attractive for Bentley Systems. With its 2021 acquisition of Seequent, Bentley now owns an industry-leading geotechnical tool that uncovers the complexities under the surface, a capability that many mining and energy companies are looking for. We think the proportion of revenue contributed by resource customers is on track to reach one-third of the company’s total over the next few years.

Digital twin is an attractive long-term growth opportunity for Bentley Systems. Bentley’s iTwin and Synchro products provide a digital context of infrastructure design, construction, and operations, which translates to stable income throughout the asset’s decades-long lifecycle. That said, it will take time for digital twin solutions to penetrate the infrastructure market, as it will be a long-term evolution in infrastructure engineering. We think Bentley’s leadership in digital twin solutions will gradually reflect in the company’s financials over the long term.

Bentley Systems has nearly completed its sales channel transformation, with over 90% of revenue coming from direct sales channels. Continued investment in its Virtuosity e-store creates a streamlined self-serve experience, significantly reducing the barrier for small and midsize businesses to procure Bentley products. This is especially important for Bentley Systems’ long-term growth as the company lands hundreds of new customers each quarter, most of which are smaller infrastructure contractors. The direct sales channel can also give Bentley Systems more insight into usage patterns, aligning future product development with user needs. High direct sales penetration and a large subscription revenue base are key factors supporting our forecast for Bentley Systems’ double-digit revenue growth over the next decade.

Read more about Bentley Systems here.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.81
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
• Industry: Semiconductors

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is the world’s largest dedicated chip foundry, with about 70% market share in 2025. This cheap stock looks 19% undervalued relative to our fair value estimate of $534 per share.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is the world’s largest dedicated contract chip manufacturer, or foundry, with over 70% market share as of mid-2026. It makes integrated circuits for customers based on their proprietary IC designs. TSMC has long benefited from semiconductor firms around the globe transitioning from integrated device manufacturers to fabless designers. Like all foundries, it assumes the costs and capital expenditures of running factories amid a highly cyclical market for its customers. Foundries tend to add excessive capacity during times of burgeoning demand, which can result in underutilization during downturns, which hampers profitability.

The rise of fabless semiconductor firms has supported the growth of foundries, which in turn has encouraged increased competition. However, most of these newer competitors are confined to low-end manufacturing due to prohibitive costs and engineering know-how associated with leading-edge technology. To prolong the excess returns enabled by leading-edge process technology, or nodes, TSMC initially focuses on logic products, mostly used on central processing units and mobile chips, then focuses on more cost-conscious applications. This strategy has been successful, illustrated by the fact that the firm is one of the two foundries still possessing leading-edge nodes while dozens of peers lag.

We note two long-term growth factors for TSMC. First, the consolidation of semiconductor firms is expected to create demand for integrated systems made with the most advanced nodes. Second, organic growth of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and high-performance computing applications may last for decades. AI and HPC play a central role in quickly processing human and machine inputs to solve complex problems like autonomous driving and language processing, which accentuates the need for more energy-efficient chips. Cheaper semiconductors have made integrating sensors, controllers, and motors to improve home, office, and factory efficiency possible.

Read more about TSMC here.

Autodesk

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.82
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Mid Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Standard
• Industry: Software—Application

Autodesk is a multinational software company best known for pioneering computer-aided design with its AutoCAD product. Autodesk provides design software for a variety of verticals, including architecture and construction, manufacturing, and media and entertainment. This cheap growth stock looks 18% undervalued and has a fair value estimate of $268 per share.

Autodesk has continually innovated its product lineup and has become the industry standard for design software. The company’s latest innovation is centered around its three industry clouds—Forma, Fusion, and Flow—to provide an interconnected experience that accelerates the circulation of design ideas among different stakeholders. Underneath the industry clouds, Autodesk also has a platform services product that allows users to leverage data for customized solutions, unlocking additional productivity.

We think Autodesk’s next-generation industry cloud offerings are leading market solutions that should sufficiently address customers’ needs to digitalize their workflows. Fusion, the manufacturing cloud, should see faster adoption due to Autodesk’s midmarket focus in this category, but the adoption of Forma and Flow can take longer, as many customers are comfortable with their existing workflows built on Autodesk’s incumbent tools like Revit and Maya.

Besides product innovation, Autodesk also introduced major changes to its go-to-market model in recent years. The new Flex tokens provide occasional users with a more flexible option to access Autodesk software, allowing them to make payments based on the number of days needed. We think the token-based pricing model should incentivize more usage from lower-end customers and customers outside of core design functions. More importantly, tokens are a well-suited pricing scheme for Autodesk’s future AI functionalities, as pay-as-you-go options are often helpful in driving early user adoption. Together with the new transaction model, where Autodesk receives payment directly from customers, we foresee further evolution of the pricing scheme as Autodesk gains more insight into customers’ consumption habits.

We expect the addition of board members nominated by an activist investor to boost Autodesk’s operating efficiency and deliver tangible margin improvements. Sales channel reforms and layoffs are both initial steps toward a larger goal that supports our operating margin expansion forecast of approximately 800 basis points over the next five years.

Read more about Autodesk here.

Ecolab

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.89
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Mid Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
• Industry: Specialty Chemicals

The only chemicals company on our list of the best growth stocks to buy now, Ecolab produces and markets cleaning and sanitation products for the industrial manufacturing, data center, hospitality, healthcare, and life sciences markets. It is the global market share leader in this category and looks 11% undervalued, with a fair value estimate of $305 per share.

Ecolab is the global leader in cleaning, sanitation, and water management. For example, it provides products that help its hospitality and food-service customers do laundry and wash dishes. With unmatched scale and a solid razor-and-blade business model, Ecolab’s competitive advantages are strong. The company’s cleaning and sanitation scale dwarfs the competition. Ecolab generates over double the revenue of its largest rival. Ecolab controls roughly 9.5% of the $165 billion global market. Its industries are fragmented, with many markets made up of regional and local competitors. The company is an attractive partner to global hospitality, food-service, and manufacturing firms. We think it will continue to grow through market share gains and expansion into new end markets.

Ecolab uses a razor-and-blade business model by providing customers with cleaning equipment that uses only Ecolab’s proprietary consumables. This model creates a steady stream of consumables revenue. Its installed-base-and-consumables model also leads to high customer switching costs, as clients are generally reluctant to replace equipment and retrain staff.

The company sells directly to customers in most cases and focuses on reducing its clients’ costs in areas such as water, energy, labor, and turnaround time. This generates pricing power and builds customer loyalty.

Ecolab’s water treatment business also benefits from switching costs. We expect fresh water costs will continue to rise around the world. This will make Ecolab’s water management systems, which reduce customer water usage, more valuable, as they lower customer operating expenses. Ecolab should also benefit from growth in data centers and semiconductors, where the company is a leading supplier of water management and cooling technologies. We expect the high-tech water business to be the largest source of incremental profit growth.

Ecolab also operates in life sciences and healthcare, where it sells products and services to pharmaceutical and personal-care product manufacturers and the healthcare industry. The firm should benefit from an aging Western population that requires more healthcare and consumes more pharmaceuticals.

Read more about Ecolab here.

MSCI

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.90
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Mid Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
• Industry: Financial Data and Stock Exchanges

MSCI provides financial data and software. Its largest and most profitable segment is its index segment, where it provides benchmarking to asset managers and asset owners. MSCI boasts over $18 trillion in benchmarked assets as of December 2025. This affordable growth stock is trading at a 10% discount to our fair value estimate of $610 per share.

Since going public in 2007, MSCI has emerged as a leader in providing data and software to asset managers and asset owners. Its crown jewel is the index segment, which makes up over 55% of overall revenue and 70% of operating profit. Through early leadership in non-US indexes, MSCI boasts over $18 trillion (December 2025) in benchmarked assets. Because index data is critical to stakeholders that benchmark to MSCI, its index subscriptions have strong retention and pricing power.

Though pressure on ETF expense ratios has weighed on MSCI’s license fee rate (which is roughly 2.4 basis points), the firm has benefited from market appreciation and robust net inflows as investors seek low-cost passive ETFs. Customer concentration is real, as BlackRock makes up almost half of MSCI’s asset-based fees.

In 2019, MSCI signed a 10-year agreement with BlackRock that includes some price concessions, but we believe the 10-year horizon should solidify the relationship between the two firms and note that at the end of 2025, MSCI extended its agreement with BlackRock to 2035 while agreeing to modest pricing concessions. MSCI also earns fees for passive mutual funds and royalty revenue for the trading of MSCI-linked futures and options.

MSCI’s analytics segment (about 20%-25% of revenue) offers software subscriptions for risk and portfolio management analytics. About 10% of the firm’s revenue is its sustainability and climate segment. This business has slowed considerably amid ESG underperformance and US political backlash.

We note these segments have applications to MSCI’s index business, such as the creation of factor and ESG indexes. Just under 10% of the firm’s revenue is private assets. We see the acquisitions of Real Capital Analytics (2021) and Burgiss (2023) as MSCI placing a bet on the growth of private asset investing.

Amidst pressure from ValueAct Capital in 2015, MSCI has been disciplined with operating expenses. Adjusted EBITDA margin has grown from 41% in 2014 to 61% in 2025 with notable expansion in the firm’s analytics segment. Given operating leverage from fixed costs, we expect continued margin expansion, but at a slower pace.

Read more about MSCI here.

AstraZeneca

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.90
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
• Industry: Drug Manufacturers—General

AstraZeneca sells branded drugs across a number of major therapeutic areas, including oncology; cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic; rare disease; and respiratory and immunology. The majority of sales come from international markets, with the US representing close to one third of its sales. The stock is trading at a 10% discount to our fair value estimate of $184 per share.

AstraZeneca has built its leading presence in the pharma and biotech industry on patent-protected drugs and a developing pipeline that support a wide moat. The strong replenishment of new drugs sets up solid long-term growth.

Astra’s pipeline is emerging as one of the strongest in the drug group, and we think the company is developing several key products that hold blockbuster potential. In particular, the company’s launched cancer drugs Tagrisso, Imfinzi, Lynparza, and Calquence are well positioned based on leading efficacy in hard-to-treat cancers. These drugs also carry strong pricing power to support higher margin sales. Astra is well positioned in the respiratory and diabetes spaces too, although these areas tend to have poor pricing power relative to cancer drugs.

In addition to internal development, Astra has aggressively pursued acquisitions, with largely positive recent results. The stake in Acerta looks to be developing well, with blood cancer drug Calquence taking share from older drugs. The joint development with Daiichi Sankyo on cancer drug Enhertu looks well positioned for growth. Also, the 2021 acquisition of Alexion looks like a solid strategic move done at a reasonable price, as it brought in an excellent rare-drug portfolio with strong pricing power.

As Astra’s next generation of drugs launches, we expect operating margins to improve based on the strong pricing power of the new drugs and the operating leverage the firm should attain as the new drugs reach critical mass. Also, as the new drugs launch, Astra is reducing the asset divestiture strategy it employed to help bridge the massive patent losses facing the firm over the past few years until the newer drugs were ready. While the asset sales helped prop up earnings and support the dividend during a challenging time, the strategy is not maintainable. As new drugs gain traction, Astra will likely continue to reduce asset sales.

Read more about AstraZeneca here.

Chipotle Mexican Grill

• Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.93
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: Medium
• Morningstar Style Box: Mid Growth
• Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
• Industry: Restaurants

Our list of the best growth stocks to buy now closes with Chipotle Mexican Grill. Chipotle is a leading fast-casual, Mexican-inspired restaurant chain, generating $11.9 billion in sales across 3,983 company-operated US locations, 104 international units primarily in Canada and Europe, and 14 licensed stores largely operated in the Middle East at the end of 2025. This cheap growth stock looks 7% undervalued and has a fair value estimate of $36 per share.

Chipotle isn’t immune to the pullback in the fast-casual and broader restaurant industries, but it isn’t standing still. Indeed, management is ramping up investments intended to strengthen consumers’ value perception by enhancing the menu and in-store operations, expanding its digital reach, and boosting marketing to tout its better-for-you positioning and competitive price points. We surmise that Chipotle’s prudent investment track record, on-trend culinary offerings, and expanding unit base have driven impressive market share gains, as US system sales jumped 15% annually over the past five years, outpacing 9.5% and 10.5% growth in total foodservice and Latin American limited-service, respectively. We expect share gains to persist, supported by our forecast for $4.2 billion in capital expenditures over the next five years, well above the $2.7 billion deployed in the comparable period.

More specifically, rather than relying on discounts to lure traffic, we view Chipotle’s efforts to elevate the core experience by judiciously delivering demanded offerings, better service, and greater convenience. In this vein, Chipotle has addressed portion concerns and is accelerating innovation, with four limited-time offers in 2026, up from two, which we posit can lift visit frequency and checks. At the same time, management continues to handle complexity by investing in throughput—rolling out labor-saving tools such as produce slicers and dual-sided planchas—which should also improve consistency and speed of service. Over the long term, we expect Chipotle to further leverage AI and automation to enhance its two-makeline model.

We’re also sanguine on Chipotle’s efforts to build on its digital strengths and meet consumers where they are. As such, improved utilization of the loyalty program—now reaching roughly 21 million active members—should deepen engagement and support continued gains in the digital mix, which rose to 37% in 2025 from 18% in 2019, alongside higher average checks. We also see upside as Chipotle continues to roll out Chipotlanes, which now represent about 30% of its footprint and enable roughly 30-second handoffs, bolstering convenience.

Read more about Chipotle Mexican Grill here.

Find More of the Best Growth Stocks to Buy

Investors who’d like to extend their search for top growth stocks can do the following:

• Investors who’d rather invest in growth stocks through a managed product like an exchange-traded fund or a mutual fund can find ideas to research further in The Best Growth Funds.
• Read Morningstar’s Guide to Stock Investing to learn how our approach to investing can inform your stock-picking process.
• Use the Morningstar Investor screener to build a shortlist of growth stocks to research and watch.