Ben’s Portfolio update end of June 2025

SlowAndFast · July 20, 2025, 4:54pm

Ben’s Portfolio update end of June 2025

Returns and portfolio holdings:

	Portfolio	Notes
2022	-15.6%*	*Jul-Dec, since I started posting my portfolio. (For portfolio returns before I started posting on Saul’s, see one of my earlier recaps.)
2023	77.8%
2024	31.7%

2025	YTD	Month
Jan	9.1%	9.1%
Feb	5.0%	-3.7%
Mar	-10.4%	-14.7%
Apr	-2.4%	8.8%
May	19.6%	22.6%
Jun	32.7%	11.0%

Time stamp: June 30th, after market close

These are my current positions:

	Jun 2025	May 2025	First buy*
Cloudflare	20.8%	19.5%	11/2/2020
Nvidia	19.0%	18.0%	5/13/2020

Snowflake	13.1%	13.4%	2/8/2021
Crowdstrike	11.9%	12.3%	5/13/2020
Axon	10.4%	10.4%	4/2/2024
Datadog	8.7%	8.4%	5/13/2020

Monday	5.6%	5.8%	9/13/2021
Samsara	4.7%	6.0%	1/8/2024
Zscaler	4.4%	4.3%	3/4/2021

TradeDesk	1.5%	1.8%	5/13/2020

*held through today
Time stamp: June 30th, after market close

Company comments

Crowdstrike:

Crowdstrike reported Fiscal Q1 2026 on 6/3/25. This was an interesting report. If you just look at the headline numbers they reported you might get the idea that they are in a bit of a trouble. You might not be wrong. I think the July 19th incident and their GTM changes that followed (e.g. customer commitment packages) are clearly showing a negative impact in their financials; all the way from top to bottom line. Does that mean that this is a trim/sell? To answer this question I think that (for this report in particular) it is very important to consider the narrative that frames those numbers. The main question being “Are Crowdstrike’s financials currently being weighed down by the July 19th incident or by a bigger underlying problem and how temporary will that be?” The answer to this question is not straight forward. I think apart from the incident they had, Crowdstrike is currently re-inventing themselves in terms of how they sell their products moving to a consumption model (by the way Cloudflare, for example goes through something similar with their change to pool-of-funds contracts). So here is what I think is the bottom line: Crowdstrike’s move to Falcon-flex, which allows customers to freely explore new products without having to commit long-term is a great move to get customers to try and then appreciate new products, which will hopefully translate into new future long-term commitments. As a result, some headline numbers currently experience headwinds, but for now I believe those headwinds will be temporary (few quarters) and will translate into revenue and profitability tailwinds down the road. As an aside: whether the incident pushed Crowdstrike into leaning more into their already ongoing GTM changes or whether they would have made those changes anyways probably doesn’t even matter at this point - the incident could have even helped them to focus on improving their sales motion rather than delaying changes and maintaining the status quo until later, which might not have been a good thing. Of course this is just speculation that goes to show that we don’t really know if any changes were/are necessary and if the changes Crowdstrike is implementing will actually work out favorably. So in a way this is currently a bit of a turn-around investment, which I generally avoid. But having followed this leadership team and how well they have been executing until the July 19th incident last year (and including how well - in my mind - they managed the incident response), I am willing to stick around with my current position - at least for now. Other than trusting management there are several points that give confidence in their execution:

Strong Falcon Flex Momentum and Performance:

Significant Deal Value: Since inception less than two years ago, over $3.2 billion in total account deal value closed with more than 820 customers.
Accelerated Growth: $774 million added to Falcon Flex account value in the recent quarter, representing 31% sequential growth and more than 6x year-over-year growth. This shows rapid adoption and successful execution of this GTM model.
Large Deal Sizes and Longer Duration: Average Flex deal size is over $1 million, with an average subscription length of 31 months, indicating significant, long-term customer commitments.
High Deployment Rate: More than 75% of Flex contracts are already deployed, suggesting efficient implementation and customers quickly utilizing their purchased capacity.
“Reflex” Activity: 39 Flex customers have already exhausted their initial contracts and returned for additional purchases (“Reflexes”). This demonstrates strong customer satisfaction, continued demand, and the program’s ability to drive repeat business and expansion.

Clear Path to Reaccelerated ARR Growth:

Sequential Improvement in Q2: Management explicitly expects sequential ARR growth to improve in Q2.
Meaningful Back-Half Acceleration: A strong reacceleration of ARR is anticipated in the back half of FY26, driven by the sustained momentum from Falcon Flex and Reflexes.
Strategic Investments Bearing Fruit: Investments made in Q1 (cloud identity, exposure management, AI, NextGen SIEM) are expected to fuel this acceleration, indicating proactive R&D and GTM optimizations.

Deep Platform Adoption and Stickiness:

Multi-Module Usage: Nearly half of subscription customers are using six or more modules. This indicates strong platform consolidation, reducing churn risk, and increasing upsell capacity. This deep adoption validates the value of their integrated platform approach.

Robust Partner-Sourced Pipeline:

Significant Channel Contribution: 60% of Q1 deal value was sourced via partners, demonstrating a strong, effective, and expanding channel funnel that is expected to contribute significantly to H2 growth.

Transparent Handling of Customer Choice Program (CCP) Impact:

Acknowledged Headwind: Management openly explained the temporary separation between ARR and subscription revenue due to the CCP, which shifted revenue timing.
Quantified Impact: They provided specific figures ($11 million in Q1, projected $10-$15 million for remaining quarters, totaling about $50 million for the fiscal year), demonstrating transparency and control over financial impacts.
Implied Stronger Underlying Performance: The calculation showing that full-year guidance would be higher (e.g., $4.825 billion versus $4.785 billion) and YoY growth stronger (22% vs 21%) if not for the CCP’s timing impact, reinforces confidence in underlying business health.

Effective Navigation of Challenges (July 19th Incident Context):

The fact that Falcon Flex (a pre-existing initiative) was leveraged to manage the aftermath of the July 19th incident, and that the company is still projecting strong reacceleration and has transparently addressed financial impacts, implicitly demonstrates management’s ability to adapt and execute even in the face of unexpected challenges.

As you can see these six points draw a very different picture than what you get when you just look at the usual headline numbers in their Q2 report (summarized below versus my prior expectations).

Overview of how Crowdstrike performed versus my expectations:

Revenue expectation: $1133M (7% QoQ, 23% YoY), implying a 2.6% beat this Q.
→ $1103M (4.2% QoQ, 19.8% YoY), a 0% beat.
Q2 new revenue guide: $1155M (1.9% QoQ, 20% YoY) which I would interpret as $1184M (4.5% QoQ, 23% YoY), assuming QoQ growth will decelerate seasonally.
→ $1148M (4.1% QoQ, 19.1% YoY), which I now interpret as 1165M (5.6% QoQ, 20.9% YoY), expecting them to catch up somewhat after a weak Q1.
Net new ARR of more than $200M (-10% QoQ and ARR +4.8% QoQ).
→ 194M (-13.6% QoQ and ARR +4.6% QoQ).
I would like to see around $6.63b RPO (2% QoQ, 41% YoY); cRPO around $3.5b (53% of RPO, 25% YoY).
→ $6.8b (4.6% QoQ, 45% YoY), cRPO $3.536b (52% of RPO, 25.4% YoY).
I would like to see NRR greater or equal to 112%.
→ “in-line with management’s expectations”. CRWD publishes their NRR numbers for past Q1s, Q2s, Q3s and Q4s only in Q4s (it has been like this for a while, so not sure why some keep being confused about this and claim they stopped reporting it silently).
I would like to see about $216M operating income.
→ $201M.
I would like to see about $201M net income.
→ $185M.
I would like to see no multi-product customer decline.
→ 5+ customers cohort discontinued, 6+ stayed at 48%, 7+ stayed at 32%, 8+ improved to 22% from 21%.
I would like to see gross retention close to 97%.
→ 97%.
Thoughts from previous Q: Ben’s Portfolio update end of March 2025

Samsara:

Samsara reported Fiscal Q1 2026 on 6/5/25.

Looking at Samsara’s YoY revenue growth of 30.7% combined with their new FY guide of 24% growth (which I currently expect will actually be about 28%), it is clear that they have started a cycle of significant revenue growth deceleration. Just look at the trend starting from the previous Q1: 37% → 37% → 36% → 35% (adjusted), to now 31%. And following their Q2 and updated FY guides, I expect it to continue to roughly 29% in Q2, 27% in Q3 and 26% in Q4. Yes, Samsara is dealing with some significant macroeconomic headwinds, just look at the answer to one of the questions in the Q&A:

"I mean, it’s just having direct conversations with customers, like Liberation Day hits, higher tariffs, come on board than I think what anyone kind of expected. And then, customers saying, hey, I’m buying a lot of tariff-impacted vehicles and assets and other equipment. And I’m focused on prioritizing my strategies and how I’m going to purchase these things. And that becomes kind of a near-term concern because those are assets that they ultimately use to drive revenue. And so, hey, I still plan on digitizing my operations. I understand that there’s real ROI here and I’m excited about the payback period. But in this kind of period of uncertainty, I need to make sure that I’m focusing on some of these tariff-impacted goods and that can just delay conversations .”

Putting aside the macro-uncertainties (which could either give upside or downside) the question is what makes me want to stay invested if that growth trajectory really pans out as I currently expect it? Well, I have two thoughts here: first, growing revenues more than 25% a year is still pretty amazing by itself and second, there is actually one thing that can offset revenue growth deceleration, and that is profitability acceleration. And this is where Samsara clearly delivers: It is actually quite rare to see such strong operational leverage in a company; operating expenses only grew 8.2% QoQ (that is non-GAAP, SBC-subtracted), while revenue grew 30.7%. This led to significant margin expansion. Operating income margin was 13.9%, up from 2.2% last Q1. Net income margin was 17%, up from 5.7% last Q1 and free cash flow margin was 12.5%, up from 6.6% last Q1 - quite a feat. And with decelerating revenue growth I will be looking for continued margin expansion going forward. Aside from the revenue growth and profitability dynamics (the former is also reflected in RPO, cRPO, ARR and net new ARR trends) another metric that stood out positively was large ($100k+) customer growth. Note that they changed their customer count methodology and gave updated numbers for the last two years, but they also gave Q1 customer numbers under the old methodology. Under the new one, large customers grew 35.1% YoY, compared to 34.4% in Q4. With that they added 154 large customers compared to 105 in the previous Q1. So while (just like revenue growth) the long term growth trend is decelerating it was nice to see a YoY acceleration compared to Q4.

By the way, for those of you who might think that once this tariff headwind stuff abates Samsara will re-accelerate revenue growth: By now I have seen periods of revenue growth deceleration with many companies at similar revenue base (~billion dollar per year) and I don’t think it is realistic to believe any such company can simply re-accelerate revenue growth after a period of headwinds. What happens instead in my experience is that revenue growth just stops decelerating or at some point decelerates much much slower. I think the reason for this is that those companies still grow at an incredible pace, so that just a year or two puts them into the multi-billion dollar annual revenue range where the law of large numbers becomes so dominant that a lot of tail-winds are needed to just keep their growth rate or to just decelerate slowly. So even if Samsara’s current tariff headwinds are temporary (on the order of a couple of quarters), I don’t expect them to accelerate above 30% again … But again, I don’t think that is needed for a good investment. In my mind, 20-25% revenue growth for many years while churning out profits can be a great recipe for investment success.

Overview of how Samsara performed versus my expectations:

Revenue expectation: $363M (4.9% QoQ, 29.3% YoY), implying a 3.5% beat.
→ $367M (5.9% QoQ, 30.7% YoY), a 4% beat.
Q2 new revenue guide: $375M (3.4% QoQ, 25% YoY) which I would interpret as $388M (6.8% QoQ, 29% YoY).
→ $372M (1.4% QoQ, 23.9% YoY), which I now interpret as 387M (5.5% QoQ, 28.9% YoY), implying a similar beat as in Q1.
I would like to see net new ARR around $82M.
→ $77.5M.
I would like to see RPO around $2.84b (7% QoQ) and cRPO around $1.34b.
→ RPO was $2.76b (3.9% QoQ), cRPO was $1.31b.
I would like to see core customer NRR around 115%.
→ 115%.
I would like to see large customer NRR around 120%.
→ not given.
I would like to see around 150 new $100k+ ARR customers (2656 total, 35.2% YoY) and at least 123 total $1m+ ARR customers (5 adds).
→ under the old customer count methodology, they got 160 new $100k+ ARR customers (2666 total). 154 adds under the new methodology (to 2638, up 35.1% YoY).
I would like to see around $39M operating income, corresponding to a 10.8% operating margin.
→ $51.1M, a 13.9% margin.
Thoughts from previous Q: Ben’s Portfolio update end of April 2025

Wrap up

Wow, it has already been 3 years since I started posting my portfolio on Saul’s board and as long since I have been trying fully adopt Saul’s investing style with this portfolio. So, maybe it is time for a first, cautious look at past CAGR performance? Well, here goes:






CAGR
Our Portfolio
IVV (S&P500)
QQQ (NASDAQ)
WCLD (Cloud comp.)




3 year
38%
18%
28%
9%


2 year
50%
18%
25%
7%


1 year
44%
13%
15%
14%

Time stamp: June 30th, after market close.

Honestly, I would be surprised if my portfolio will be able to keep anything close to my current 3-year CAGR performance going forward. I think the biggest part of it was simply staying invested in great companies for the re-bound after the exceptional 2022 draw-down. I think the same is true, however, for the strong S&P500 and NASDAQ performance the last 3 years. So, going forward, I’d be more than happy if my portfolio can achieve a CAGR roughly in-line with the weighted average revenue growth rate of the companies I hold. In case you wonder, why not simply invest then in some of the higher growth companies that are being discussed here? The reason is simply that I couldn’t convince myself yet (also partly for a lack of time to be able to more deeply research and understand those companies) how durable their stronger revenue growth will be going forward; I really don’t want to again invest into another 2021 version of Upstart, when instead, I can invest in solid compounders like my top-6 positions. This disciplined approach, focusing on businesses with wide moats, proven resilience and sustainable, strong growth trajectories, positions this portfolio for long-term success and continued peace of mind, allowing me to confidently watch my companies build lasting value.

So, with that I am wishing you all continued investing success and I am looking forward to seeing where the portfolio is at the 5-year mark from fully adopting (my version of) Saul’s investing style!

Ben

Past recaps

My most recent earnings recaps of Monday, Axon, Datadog and Cloudflare can be found here: Ben’s Portfolio update end of May 2025

Topic		Replies	Views
Ben’s Portfolio update end of September 2024 Saul’s Investing Discussions	0	1993	September 30, 2024
Ben’s Portfolio update end of October 2025 Saul’s Investing Discussions	1	1860	November 9, 2025
Ben’s Portfolio update end of December 2024 Saul’s Investing Discussions	0	2848	January 3, 2025
Ben’s Portfolio update end of June 2024 Saul’s Investing Discussions	7	6699	September 10, 2024
Ben’s Portfolio update end of April 2025 Saul’s Investing Discussions	0	2331	May 4, 2025

CAGR	Our Portfolio	IVV (S&P500)	QQQ (NASDAQ)	WCLD (Cloud comp.)
3 year	38%	18%	28%	9%
2 year	50%	18%	25%	7%
1 year	44%	13%	15%	14%

Ben’s Portfolio update end of June 2025

Ben’s Portfolio update end of June 2025

Returns and portfolio holdings:

These are my current positions:

Company comments

Crowdstrike:

Samsara:

Wrap up

Past recaps

Related topics