Investors are still licking their wounds after a brutal first three months of trading in 2020, but not every stock moved lower during the first quarter. There are more than 600 stocks trading higher this year, and some of the names might surprise you.

Freshpet (NASDAQ:FRPT), RingCentral (NYSE:RNG), Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) all bucked the market’s roughly 20% plunge through the first three months of the year, closing out the first quarter with positive returns. Let’s see what’s making each surprising winner tick with the market.

IMAGE SOURCE: FRESHPET.

Freshpet

Pet food is typically recession-resistant, as humans will forgo a lot before skimping on feeding their fur babies. However, Freshpet is a provider of high-end refrigerated food for dogs and cats, so one would think that some cash-strapped consumers might shift to dry kibble, which is cheaper and has a longer shelf life.

Freshpet is still getting the job done. Its smart move to install branded fridges in coolers at a growing number of supermarkets is something that’s unlikely to be copied by anyone else, especially with grocers and convenience stores unlikely to give up even more valuable floor space to the niche. With the humanization of pets a clear trend and revenue accelerating for the third consecutive year in 2019, momentum remains strong with Freshpet.

RingCentral

Most cloud-based platforms were crushed in the first quarter, but RingCentral offers a platform that plays right into the new normal of today’s COVID-19 reality. RingCentral’s service allows companies to automatically route inbound calls to wherever that recipient may be, and right now, that’s often a mobile device working from home.

RingCentral’s platform was already gaining momentum even before the coronavirus crisis made communications portability even more essential. Like with Freshpet, RingCentral’s revenue accelerated in each of the three previous years at the company.

Activision Blizzard

It was a photo finish for Activision Blizzard to close out the first quarter in positive territory and with a… Continue reading at The Motley Fool