Kevin Landis

Kevin Landis is a famous tech investor. He has outperformed for a long time. In the article below it shows clearly that his thinking is very similar to Saul’s (except that Saul does it even more concentrated.)

Kevin’s largest position is TWLO at over 7%. His second largest position is NTNX.

It is a good read and it shows that other people also think like Saul and many others on this board.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/forget-warren-buffett-this…

Dave

43 Likes

Yes, Kevin Landis has destroyed the market over the past decade. Kudos to him, I’m sure he is very rich.

But if you were unlucky enough to have invested in his Firsthand Technology fund at inception, that money would have risen about 30%. Over 20 years. Not 30% annually. A total of 30%.

Worse, had you invested in his fund in 2000, about a year after the fund’s inception, you would still be down about 30% today. 19 years and a total return of -30%.

–JC

29 Likes

Bad luck stories abound

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) YTD


**Date              Price**
12/31/2018   306,000.00
05/23/2019   304,115.00
Down               0.5%

http://softwaretimes.com/pics/brka-05-24-2019.gif

Denny Schlesinger

1 Like

It is a good read and it shows that other people also think like Saul and many others on this board.

Thanks for bringing this. I find it interestring that Nutanix gets 5 mentions in the article. Many of this board abandoned it as a “broken” company the day after they had a bad quarter. And, so far, the stock has simply declined even further.

I did like the bit about talking to recruiters to see where “the smart people are moving to.” I’ve done similar things in the past based on recruiters reaching out to me (I’m in the Silicon Valley). There are a couple caveats for that, however. First is the large company effect. Google was an obvious hot company here in the valley for a while, then Facebook became the hot company, then Tesla. But, you have to be careful, as sometimes hot companies are hot mostly with new graduates, which means they’re big enough and have a reputation that people want on their resumes, not that the company is going to grow leaps and bounds. The other is that having the best tech doesn’t guarantee the company will make the right business decisions.

FWIW, right now Nutanix has been hiring (over 700 openings, including over 20 director level positions, at https://www.linkedin.com/company/nutanix/jobs/ ), and so is Elastic. Amazingly, Elastic has over 2250 positions open (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?f_C=814025&locatio… ) which seems crazy high, like not having enough people could be a restraint on the company high.

12 Likes

Many of this board abandoned it as a “broken” company the day after they had a bad quarter.

For the record, NTNX hasn’t actually reported a bad quarter…yet. The last quarter they reported was very good. However, they did give guidance suggesting that they would not meet expectations for subsequent quarters, which, deservedly so, hit the stock price hard.

I made my pitch at the time about why I am still holding a significant percentage of my portfolio in NTNX. Just a couple more weeks until their next earnings call. I do fully expect the quarter they are about to report will be pretty mediocre, but the call should give us a better understanding of where they are headed. Realistically it will probably be the next call, four months from now, when I’ll have enough information to decide whether to finally cut ties with them, or to build up my position further.

-mekong

12 Likes

Mekong I was one of the people who sold NTNX, selling it as soon as the report came out AH.

My reasons were:

  1. Massive slowdown in growth expectations during what should be on the strong uptake period of a the S-Curve. Suggesting something is wrong.

  2. Cockroach theory-usually when you see one, there are more hidden. Meaning it’s rare for a company to disappoint only one time. If I really believed in this company I may have stayed but apparently still have that “momentum” strategy deeply embedded in me.

Then after the report came out, we had the following:

  1. Quite frankly I don’t want to be in a company that has to get “lead generation spend” nailed down so perfectly to prevent the sales opportunity pipeline from drying up.

  2. Nothing about Xi, the new product line that came out. So what are growth drivers? Is Xi uptake not worth talking about?

  3. They lost market share and actually slid to #2. So I don’t see at this time how they are “eating VMW’s lunch” or anything of the sort.

Now it’s possible the HPE partnership will help, TBD. It’s possible they just get that spend just right from here on out (supposedly this is the second time this has happened since going public), it’s possible the Xi and assorted new product releases DID confuse and disorient the sales staff as they cut spending on sales and marketing (though this is not really reflected in their income statement so not quite sure where they cut back on lead generation), and they can get this fixed.

But I will most likely stay out regardless of what happens due to #3 and wish shareholders best of luck during this “turnaround” though, yes, by all accounts it’s still a growing company and hard to call that a turnaround.

10 Likes