AMS Portfolio Review - July 2021

AMS PORTFOLIO REVIEW – JULY 2021

BACKGROUND & OVERVIEW

I run investments in both the UK (an investment legacy from my UK origins focused mainly on stable high yield income producing investments) as well as here in Singapore, (where I have been living for approaching 12 years).

My Singapore investments are split between a US portfolio and an Asia portfolio (listed equities in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia). My US portfolio is principally a Saul style pure growth portfolio whilst my Asia portfolio is a mix of High Yield income producers (mostly REITs) and Asia located growth plays (e.g. Ali Baba, Meituan Dianping and Afterpay). This Portfolio summary will focus only on the US portfolio.

The US portfolio has produced outsized returns since discovering Saul’s board - I’m up ~300% since 2016 Year End (and that doesn’t factor in ongoing withdraws during the period whilst getting my own consulting business up and running with my business partner).

The portfolio has also gone through a considerable reconstitution. Going back 4 years I had 120+ stocks in my US portfolio and very low concentration amongst holdings, (my top 15 holdings were between 1.5% and 2.5% in value), I had a lot of long held positions with many investments under water and if I’m honest with myself a lot of equities where the investment thesis had changed and I had not acted accordingly.

As of today my US portfolio is down to below 50 positions with much more substantial investment sizes and higher overall concentration. My holding period has come down although I still own stocks for longer in duration than many on this board and will tend to stick with positions when conviction and investment theses remain strong even if there might be short term weaknesses in the share price or quarter to quarter transitions. Cloud and tech now dominate my portfolio in terms of holdings and value and I’m no longer allocating investment towards old economy plays no matter how favourable the situations or the tailwinds. I have also reduced my exposure to China considerably for a number of reasons, including; the tailing off of its hypergrowth emerging era, the delisting risk in the US and the availability of China plays on the HK market. In common with others on this board the position sizes are driven by a combination of performance and conviction – as a result positions are stratified into tiers within the portfolio. My investment selections, entries and exits are now financial/business performance driven as far as possible and there’s no room for story or narrative investing, turnaround speculation or value fishing. Key mega themes that I do pay attention to and am comfortable maintaining outsized exposure to include: eCommerce (~20%), Cybersecurity (~15%), Big Data (35%), Fintech (~5-10%) and throughout that – the Cloud. These mega themes are in part a function of secular tailwinds and in part the respective TAMs involved. I have also had exposure to Genomics although I have exited that sector for now.

PORTFOLIO COMPOSITION:-

The top tier ~10-20% positions include: Shopify, Crowdstrike, TTD and represent my highest conviction positions together with outstanding growth rates and market positions.

The second tier of 3-6% positions are high conviction strong growth plays including a mix of mature performers (MongoDB, Datadog and Square) as well as younger stars (Cloudflare, Zoom, Elastic, Palantir and Snowflake).

The third tier of 1-3% positions is a mix of: early stage positions (Upstart, ZScaler, Digital Turbine, Skilz, Fiverr, ZoomInfo and Exp World), deliberately lower exposure situations - either due to either lower conviction and/or lower growth levels (Teladoc, Pure Storage, Fastly, Alteryx and Nutanix) or sector over exposure and self enforced limits (e.g. eCommerce in the case of MercadoLibre, SEA & Global-e Online)

Outside the top 20, other notable and/or recent positions that I am: following with interest, considering building a more significant position in and seeing some high returns with include: Docusign, Global-e Online, Peloton, Digital Turbine, Asana, Acuity Ads, Lightspeed, Futu, UP Fintech, Innovative Industrial Properties and Fiverr.

Roku and a few gene sequencing players are also on my watchlist. Snowflake, Docusign, Fiverr, Alkuri and ZScaler are positions I am looking to build with most interest (or re-build in the case of ZScaler).

3 holdings I would mention that sit outside of my US portfolio include:
Afterpay at ~10% of my US portfolio in value (which I hold in my Asia portfolio and via an Australia listing), up over 300% in 2020 and up over 500% for me overall.
Ali Baba at ~5% of my US portfolio in value (which I hold in in my Asia portfolio via an HK listing) and is probably a candidate for a 2-10 trillion $ franchise.
Meituan Dianping at 1.25% of my US portfolio in value with stellar returns to date (250%) and another potential trillion $ business in the making.

Buys & Sells in the Month

New positions: None
Additions: None
Sells: None
Exits: None

This has been a very inactive trading month for me with no share transactions. I am interested in pushing up my holdings in Fiverr, Upstart, Global-e Online and will be watching results from Lightspeed, Teledoc, Skilz closely with possibility of trimming or exiting on any failure to deliver.
I will be keeping an eye on any remaining China holdings and looking to sell into strength and exit as China seems intent on unleashing the sum of all fears from a systemic and existential risk to a foreign investor perspective.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW:-

Monthly Performance


Month US Port   S&P
Jan   +  6.42%  -  1.1%
Feb   +  0.16%  +  2.6%
Mar   - 13.98%  +  4.2%
Apr   +  4.93%  +  5.2%
May   -  0.98%  +  0.5%
Jun   + 16.48%  +  2.2%
Jul   -  0.18%  +  2.3%
YTD   + 10.80%  + 17.0% 

My portfolio ended -0.18% on the month, having previously reached an all time high in February (up 20%+ for the year at that point) then down to a low of around -25%. I ended +10.80% for the year to date, (accounting for withdraws), having clawed back from a triple bottom low point and been up >2% on the month/+13% YTD at the high point during July.

Overall portfolio allocation rankings, theme & YTD returns


**#  Holding        Portfolio(%) Previous Mth (%) Mega-Theme           	YTD-SP-Change(%)**
1  Shopify        17.7%        17.2%            eCommerce/Fintech/Cloud   + 35% 
2  Crowdstrike	  12.0%        11.8%            Cybersecurity/Cloud       + 23%	        
3  The Trade Desk  8.9%         8.4%            Digital                   +  5%	        
4  DataDog         5.5%         5.2%            Big Data/Cloud            + 13%
5  Zoom            4.1%         4.2%            Cloud                     - 14%
6  Square          3.8%         3.7%            Fintech/eCommerce/Cloud   + 17%
7  Snowflake       3.6%         3.3%            Big Data/Cloud            -  5%
8  Cloudflare      3.5%         3.1%            Big Data/Cloud            + 58%
9  MongoDB         3.4%         3.5%            Big Data/Cloud            +  1%
10 Elastic         3.3%         3.2%            Big Data/Cybersecurity    +  0%
11 Palantir        3.0%         3.6%            Big Data/Cloud            -  6%
12 MercadoLibre    2.8%         2.8%            eCommerce/Fintech         -  2%
13 Sea             2.4%         2.4%            eCommerce/Fintech/Cloud   + 43% 
14 Teladoc         2.3%         2.6%            Cloud                     - 22%
15 Nutanix         2.2%         2.3%            Big Data/Cloud            + 14%
16 ZScaler         2.1%         1.9%            Cybersecurity/Cloud       + 19%
17 Asana           2.0%         1.7%            Digital/Cloud             +141%
18 Pure Storage    2.0%         2.0%            Big Data/Cloud            - 13%
19 Upstart         1.8%         1.8%            Digital/Fintech           +204%
20 Alteryx         1.7%         1.9%            Big Data                  - 37%	

NB 2021 YTD SP Change are share price changes not portfolio position gains

Total % gain rankings


**#  Holding		%	Thesis Check	Conviction**
1  Shopify		2283%	On Track	High
2  The Trade Desk	 804%	On Track	High
3  Square		 481%	On Track	High 
4  Crowdstrike		 326%	On Track	High 
5  MongoDB 		 292%	On Track	Medium
6  Cloudflare		 274%	On Track	High
7  Zoom 		 254%	On Watch	Medium 
8  MercadoLibre          247%	On Track	High
9  Asana		 180%	On Track	Medium
10 Datadog		 124%	On Track	High 
11 Teladoc		 112%	On Track	Medium 
12 Elastic		 105%	On Track	Medium
13 Alteryx		  65%	On Watch	Medium 
14 Sea			  53%	On Track	High
15 eXp World		  52%	On Watch	Medium
16 Global e Online  	  44%   On Track	Medium 
17 Palantir		  39%	On Track	High
18 Digital Turbine        38%	On Track	Medium
19 Innovative Prop	  20%	On Track	Medium
20 Peloton		  18%  	On Watch	Medium

NB Gains are actual gains of investment holdings in aggregate within my portfolio not % change since beginning of the year or since first purchase.

BUSINESS SCALE, PERFORMANCE, VALUATION AND POTENTIAL OF TOP HOLDINGS

Size, Growth, Valuation, TAM & Penetration Rates for Top Holdings


**#  Holding        MCap($bn) YOY Rev Growth(%) TTM($bn)  P/S(TTM) TAM($bn)Penetration(%)  Comment**
1  Shopify         192       57%              $3.92        49     250	 1.6%            Calculated as 5% take rate of $5trn eCommerce mkt
2  Crowdstrike      60       70%              $0.87        60      37	 2.7%            Humio log mgmt @ 4.1bn TAM + 32.5bn cloud cyber security
3  The Trade Desk   41       37%              $0.90        45     725 	 0.1%
4  DataDog          34       51%              $0.67        51      24	 2.8%            Unified monitoring = $8bn
5  Zoom            115      191%              $2.65        35      86	 8.8%            Combining V/C & unified CAAS market & omni channel contact
6  Square          118      267%             $13.18         9     160  	 8.2%            TTM includes Bitcoin revs
7  Snowflake        80      110%              $0.71       112      84	 0.8%
8  Cloudflare       37       51%              $0.48        78      72	 1.4%            Application, Network & Zero Trust Services
9  MongoDB          24       39%              $0.59        37      73	 0.9%	         IDC market estimate 
10 Elastic          14       44%              $0.55        22      53	 1.0%
11 Palantir         42       49%              $1.20        35     119	 1.0% 
12 MercadoLibre     82      111%              $4.70        17      35	13.4%            5% take of 5% ecommerce of a $5trn retail market + cons. banking
13 Sea             145      147%              $5.42        27     150	 3.6%            PC/mob. gaming $97bn, SEA ecommerce $22bn & payments $30bn
14 Teladoc          24      109%              $1.63        15     121	 1.3%
15 Nutanix           8        8%              $1.33         6      90 	 1.5%
16 ZScaler          32       60%              $0.60        54      72	 0.7%            SAM
17 Asana            13       61%              $0.26        49      45    0.4%	         Productivity management software
18 Pure Storage      6       12%              $1.73         3      50	 3.5%
19 Upstart           9       90%              $0.28        34      92	12.4%            AI Fintech/Insuretech 
20 Alteryx           5        9%              $0.51        10      50	 1.0%

One of the observations I would make looking at TTM revenues and run rates as of 2021 is that our SaaS companies are starting to reach the $1bn mark. I am monitoring Market Cap and historic P/S for my holdings in this exercise as I want to keep an eye on relative size and valuations and keep scale relative to growth and valuation and potential all in view together.

Given that our holdings are growing as fast as ever but now at scale, it does make me think that aside from just holding the positions until the underlying story changes, we might need to recalibrate our thinking of where we look for growth. Traditionally the small emerging players have offered us speedster growth opportunities but some of our holdings are now becoming large enterprises and in some cases profitable. We might be sleep walking our way into a mature high growth portfolio composition as opposed to the emerging super high growth portfolio we have typically been used to. On the other hand it is possible that in this digital global era the potential for scale is orders of magnitude higher than ever before and hyper growth can be sustained further than ever before ahead of maturity kicking in.

I guess it is a classic “this time it’s different”, but is it really moment. I know I have stuck with companies that have evolved into fully fledged enterprises with sustained growth and established profitability levels (such as Shopify and The Trade Desk), when Saul and others have opted for a an agile strategy of switching to catch the next big wave that the swell is producing but we are looking at scale being reached in our portfolio almost across the board faster than we have ever experienced – the question becomes do we also hit the wall faster than ever before or is the runway for growth also elongated out. Unless our companies can add new products and new markets and unless the terminal growth of the end market TAM allows continued growth then we run the risk of share prices and multiples correcting and probably faster than ever before given the current stretch in multiples out there.

Comments & Notes

1) Shopify – cornerstone investment in a top class SaaS business with the largest TAM in the world providing the operating system for the future of commerce, supported by substantial tailwinds and expecting a future $1 trillion potential, watching for post covid new normal in eCommerce and 2021 laps with pandemic growth compares with 2020, as well as its pipeline of solution additions, entry into B2B and potential for increasing its take rate. The company has reached the $1bn/quarter run rate and is growing at 50%+. Revenue Growth declining

2) Crowdstrike – One of the fastest growing companies in the rock solid cybersecurity sector with an expanding TAM, watching for competition from ZScaler and others. Revenue Growth declining

3) The Trade Desk – A disruptor with a massive TAM & a strong moat, watching for dynamics between DSP and SSP, CTV progress and browser/device privacy measures. What I like the most about TTD is i) the massive near $1 trillion TAM ii) the outright leadership is has in the DSP space iii) that not only is this already profitable but all growth practically drops straight to the bottom line with incredible leverage in its business. The threats I can see are: i) Unified ID 2.0 or whatever replaces cookies not becoming de facto or not matching current programatic ad profitability levels ii) walled gardens representing 50% of the market holding out & iii) some kind of SSP/DSP combination player coming through the middle of the market to seize an advantage.
Revenue Growth declining

4) Datadog – best in class in the unified monitoring space. Maintaining strong growth rates but dropping, watching for leadership position and declines in growth. Revenue Growth declining

5) Zoom – a disruptor in the making with ultra high growth rates, looking for post pandemic new normal growth and laps with pandemic growth peak in 2020 and the emergence of Zoom phone which doubles its TAM, integration with its omni channel contact management acquisition and additional Zoom platform innovation Revenue Growth declining

6) Square – strong fundamentals, very high growth rates operating in multiple significant opportunities. Bitcoin and fintech payment wallets offer massive potential upside. Watching for continued Cash App expansion and adoption. Revenue Growth accelerating

7) Snowflake – Incredible technology supported by the big data mega theme of our time. Has potentially the greatest sales efficiency of any business model with expansion coming from underlying data storage and usage growth. Extraordinary leadership and cornerstone investors. Triple digit RPO/revenue growth rates. Looking out for potential emerging competition and growth rate declines vs ultra high valuation. Revenue Growth declining

8) Cloudflare – strong CDN player with high growth rates, improving competitive position, strong customer acquisition count and new solution/offerings emerging. Watching for maintaining continued growth, edge computing adoption and potential competition from Fastly. Possesses one the most stretched valuations in my portfolio. Revenue Growth level

9) MongoDB – disrupting a sizeable space against an established player, benefitting from strong big data tailwinds. Watching for declining growth rates, penetration of Atlas and competition from native AWS DB solutions. Revenue Growth accelerating

10) Elastic – undervalued but proven track record in a sweet spot of multiple optionalities including security, application monitoring and big data. Revenue Growth accelerating

11) Palantir – AI disruptor and potential leader in commercial and military/govt
space. If Palantir can genuinely become either the de-facto operating system for the organisation or the de-facto AI operating system this might have previously un-imaginable potential. Top quality visionary leaders with a strong track record. Revenue Growth accelerating

12) MercadoLibre – the Amazon of LatAm with a strong moat and fintech business driving massive growth in a highly unbanked region. Watching for competition from Stone, Amazon and Sea as well as local market challenges in LatAm. Revenue Growth accelerating

13) Sea – in the sweetspot of eCommerce, mobile gaming and fintech and increasingly dominating SE Asia. Obtaining digital banking licenses and ramping up offsite & physical retail payment wallet/payment processing services. Expanding into India, MEA and LatAm. Backed by Tencent. Looking for continued triple digit growth and achieving profitability. Revenue Growth accelerating

14) Teladoc – leader in telehealth with the combined Teledoc and Livongo offerings with strong underlying growth with solid tailwinds irrespective of Covid. Looking for additional disease management solutions and geographic expansion together with threats from changes within the US healthcare system < b> Revenue Growth declining

15) Nutanix – under valued, under respected disruptor with a large TAM supported by strong tailwinds negotiating multiple business model transitions. Looking for growth re-ignition. Vying for the position of THE operating system of the “cloud” vs VMWare. Revenue Growth accelerating

16) ZScaler – vying with Cloudstrike for the premier cybersecurity player. Represents the next generation of fully cloud based security. Growth reaccelerating and positive operational metrics looking stronger by the quarter. Elite management calibre. Revenue Growth accelerating

17) Asana – one of the leading productivity/project/collaboration management SaaS players with strong market share and position and high growth rates coming from re-investment that is impacting the bottom line. Needs to fight off recent competitor IPO providers (e.g. Monday) and demonstrate path towards profitability. Revenue Growth accelerating

18) Pure Storage – storage market disruptor with strong underlying fundamentals having passed through a business model transition. Supported by strong tailwinds. Looking for product set expansion and growth re-acceleration. Revenue Growth accelerating

19) Upstart – best in class AI disrupter of financial profiling and risk management across financial services and insurance industry. Revenue Growth level

20) Alteryx – former growth star with a pandemic growth challenge and accounting model transition together with a shift to cloud from on prem/hybrid solution. Looking for growth resumption, successful partnership outcomes and new product launch. Revenue Growth accelerating

GLTAH!
Ant

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