I am sure that subscribers will recognize that the last few days have seen a rather substantial pull-back in high growth tech names. Some losses have been greater than others. None of the valuation contraction has been based on some particular changes in the outlook for growth names, or their overall operational performance. We will…
Two of our portfolio names reported unusually strong earnings this week. In one case, Datadog, the upside was well rewarded with the shares reaching a new all-time high, up 19% for the week, and up about 32% since the start of the year. Tellingly, despite the strong appreciation last week, valuations have pretty much been…
As the first sentence of The Tale of Two Cities puts it: “It was the best of and the worst of times.” I am sure that many subscribers are unhappy-or more than that with the performance of Alteryx and Fastly. Presumably, some subscribers are pleased with the performance of Shift4 and Datadog. I try to…
We made a small change in the High Growth portfolio this morning. We chose to sell about 40% of our PTC holding at a small profit, and to buy a small position in Shift4 with the proceeds of that sale. We simply didn’t wish to increase our margin position. Currently our margin position is about…
This hasn’t been the easiest of weeks for investors in smaller, high growth names. While looking at our portfolio as a whole, on , Friday, July 16th, changes have been minimal and there has been a marginal bounce back from the stocks worst impacted by the risk-off trends of this past week, the reaction to…
High Growth tech names have depreciated sharply since the start of the sector rotation in mid-February. Most names have lost more than 20% as investors have fled the space-supposedly fearful of rising interest rates brought on by expectations of higher inflation. The flip side of this, is that companies in the space have seen a…
This afternoon we sold our position in Shift4. We had a holding of 150 shares that we had acquired at the end of last year at a price of $71.49. The shares have spiked almost 20% today-primarily based on a recommendation by B of A-which contained a double upgrade. While we do not like to…
Summary Enterprise software turned in a spectacular performance in 2020. My tea leaves suggest that the space will continue to outperform broad indices in 2021. I think a reasonable portfolio should focus on those companies who experienced demand headwinds in all or part of last year. I have taken a portfolio approach to making recommendations.…
As mentioned earlier this week, we wanted to finish selling the RPD position. Today the shares advanced a bit and we finished disposing of the position. We are trying to direct some of the investments in the portfolio into names that we believe will reap outsize benefits from the end of the pandemic. Shift4 has…
Summary Shift4 payments went public in June of this year. with an issue price of $23/share and first traded at $33/share. The shares are up substantially since the time of the iPO based on operational performance that has significantly exceeded expectations. The company is growing, both by acquiring new users, but also by converting existing…