Some General Thoughts Zscaler remains a controversial investment. Although it has bounced a little since making a recent low on September 13, it remains 40% below its recent high. Perhaps the recent high was a product of fevered imaginations and expectations. It certainly was never consistent with EV/S and cash flow valuation-but then perhaps trying…
No one sets out to be in the 2nd tier. I have never heard of a goal to be second-best, or “almost as good as.” Tech investors have long been cognizant of the experience that the leading company in a space winds up with 80% of the profits. It doesn’t always work out that way-Checkpoint makes…
Zscaler/Crowdstrike-some thoughts about their announcement Yesterday, as part of an investor event, ZS and Crowdstrike announced what could be an interesting integration of the two solutions. While some of what I write here might be considered an over-simplification, the two companies offer complementary solutions to different parts of the cyber-security problem. The core of the…
Summary DataDog is expected to launch its IPO later this week. DataDog is a leading vendor in the market of IT monitoring and performance analysis. The company has grown rapidly and reached a run rate of $330 mil. in ARR last quarter. The company offers 5 services on a single platform-far beyond the capabilities of…
Summary ZS reported its fiscal Q4 results earlier this week. The guidance provided was considered disappointing and the shares-already down because of concerns about valuation and competition-declined an additional 20%. ZS, now down about 43% from its high, has reached a valuation level (EV/S) just slightly above average for its growth cohort. The company specifically…
For the reasons we have previously cited, we wanted to trim the size of our holding in Alteryx from more than 14% of the high-growth portfolio to 11%. To do so, we sold 75 shares at Friday’s closing price of $142.07. That raised $10,655 and left us with a position of 255 shares. I want…
Last week, DocuSign was one of the few IT names to report earnings and rise. It isn’t an inconsequential component of our high-growth portfolio, although this past week we wished it had been a larger position. What should investors/subscribers do now? In a single sentence, we liked the shares before last quarter’s earnings, we liked…
Cloudera reported the results of July ending quarter last week. The results showed the first signs of achieving the opportunity that the company had when it combined with Hortonworks at the start of the year. It was just basic blocking and tackling-the real opportunity will come with the launch of CDP which is now formally…
As is often the case on a day after earnings reports, I have to try to prioritize my writing. There is much to comment about with regards to Mongo (MDB), Cloudera (CLDR), Slack (WORK) Yesterday brought another crop of earnings reports-most notably DocuSign, but others as well including Guidewire and Smartsheets. All of that said,…
Zuora reported the results of its latest fiscal quarter last week. The results showed some early signs of recovery and in particular, revenue gtowth and subscription revenue growth were considerably greater than the prior forecast. Overall, revenue growth was 21%, with subscription revenues growing 24%. The current forecast, the company provided is for revenue growth…