Some modest portfolio reshuffling. I have gotten a few questions today about what is happening with some of the stocks in our high growth portfolio. In particular, shares of Affirm are up nearly 25% as I write this while shares of Upstart are up more than 28%. Both stocks have shown exceptional share price appreciation…
Affirm: Can it satisfy investors in a fraught environment Investing in the fintech space has not been good for the performance of a portfolio during the past 14+ months. Supreme understatement, I suppose. Depending on the definition of fintech, most of the group has imploded. In terms of winners, there has been Shift4 Payments (FOUR) and…
Affirm’s quarter-was it really that bad? Writing a positive article on the shares of Affirm in the current environment is more or less equivalent to being a champagne salesperson at a temperance conference. Or perhaps a wounded gazelle running into a pride of hungry lions. Negative sentiment toward anything that looks like technology is on…
Shopify-A dispassionate look from a onetime shareholder The last time I personally owned Shopify (SHOP) was during 2019. The last time I wrote about the company for SA was back in April 2020. It was just at the end of the pandemic induced market swoon and the shares were at an adjusted price of $42, on their…
Does have Affirm have a secret sauce? Tuesday, May 24th, has been another day of fear and doubt and pain for those investors remaining in the high-growth IT space. So why write an article now about Affirm (AFRM), its outlook and its opportunities when investors are clearly making bets outside of high-growth tech. There seems…
We purchased 500 shares of Affirm in our high growth portfolio near its opening price. That increased the size of our holding of Affirm to 800 shares at an average acquisition cost of $41 Our position is now a 3.9% holding. This will be reflected in the charts we send next week. We had spoken…
The performance of equity investments have gone from bad to worse. At this point, it would appear that fears are now focused on the potential for a significant recession that will dramatically reduce earnings and perhaps lead to liquidity issues on the part of some major businesses. Will that happen? Obviously issues such as $4/gallon…
Summary Affirm reported the results of its fiscal Q2 last week. The results were exceptionally strong, particularly with regards to the growth of GMV, revenues and revenues less transaction costs. The company’s guidance was, once again, at levels that alarmed investors driving the shares down by about 38% in just 2 days. I think a…
Summary Shares of High-Growth software companies have led the market down so far in 2022. The decline in valuations and absolute share prices has been at rates that rival anything in the recent past. This decline has occurred against a background of strong and growing demand in the Information Technology (IT) space. Ironically, software demand…
Summary The valuations of high growth IT names have crashed. There has been little to be seen in the way of a bottom with share prices of IT names declining every day so far in this young year. Valuations, as I see them, looked at in terms of Enterprise Value/Sales (EV/S) ratios, but also free…