$$COUP Coupa Software

This is a cloud-based SaaS company that helps business identify cost savings, “the SalesForce of expense management”.

I found this on a list of high growth stocks the Bert mentioned a while back and mentioned it here, but was told it was not a company that Bert actually recommended. (I got lucky, had a great ride and sold to buy other stocks we talk about on this board).

I mention it again because they reported last night and the CEO was on Cramer tonight. Cramer said he has not heard a conference call with so many accolades all quarter and that he suspects it would have had a good bounce if not for the entire market today.

But next Q guidance was only 27%, which is a deceleration, however, they raised full year outlook.

Summary:

CEO…growth margin expansion, subscription margin expansion, managing nearly a trillion dollars in spend (for their clients), 100 new customers went live this year, signed United Airlines last Q, customers are seeing value in this optimization.

P&G is a customer, help them source goods and services, help with contingent labor, steamline expense management, using AI to streamline invoice management by eliminating the need to humans to input data from paper invoices.

Ai-based community intelligent where they are looking at 100 of billions of dollars in transactions and can see if customer are experiencing risks with suppliers. They can then warn all their customer of the red flags (like an AI Yelp or Amazon without fake reviews). Or can predict the best suppliers for a particular set of goods and services based on that same data. (This seems pretty valuable to me).

Here is the interview, worth a look.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/12/04/coupa-software-ceo-tou…

https://www.coupa.com/

*sorry, no time to add value with a deep dive, but worth keeping on the radar and sniffing around.

Pete.

8 Likes

I invested in this due to a recommendation made by the Rising Stars service here at TMF and doubled my money and then sold after growth seemed to be decelerating to to their ultra-sandbagged guidance.
For a change, I agree with Gary Alexander on this stock:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4226277-coupa-great-results…
Cheers, PB.

I held coup for a brief period of time but sold it to buy another stock.

As far as Ariba goes, it is true, they are well entrenched in the marketplace and an obvious choice for any company on SAP, but that leaves a lot of other companies out there. They are both well rated purchasing management software companies in a growing space. The P2P industry is expected to grow over the next few years as more businesses begin using it.

I’ve never heard of rising stars. Is it related to small growth companies? I no longer see hidden gems which was focused on smaller companies.

I have a rule breakers subscription and this being a rising star pick seems to overlap with what types of stock rule breakers recommends.

I didn’t want to get off topic here, but I just couldn’t resist. Ariba is probably worst integrated into SAP solution. When Ariba was Ariba, they are were far superior to anything SAP had as far as P2P goes (B2B, EBP, SRM were evolving SAP solutions). The idea of Ariba is great, but it can barely integrate with complexity of ECC. Sorry for being off-topic. Feel free to send me personal message if you want to discuss “benefits” of Ariba.

I believe Rising Stars is closed. I signed up a couple of years ago, bought 40 stocks, mostly micro-cap, with the plan to keep them for 5+ years. I treat it as an ETF. Coupa has been one the better performers up 70%.

I’ve never heard of rising stars. Is it related to small growth companies? I no longer see hidden gems which was focused on smaller companies. – 12x

Yes, I know this is OT but…I’m a Rule Breaker at heart.

From the Rising Stars website:

https://www.fool.com/premium/portfolios/rising-stars/

Rising Stars is The Motley Fool’s microcap portfolio — designed to give you instant access to our top small-stock recommendations.

JUST RELEASED: The 20 microcaps we think can double in 5 years

- If you’re new to Rising Stars, click here for your stocks

- If you’re an existing member, click here for your stocks

With regard to an obvious question, I have no idea when Rising Stars has opened in the past (although apparently it was recently open), when or whether it will open again or what the cost is. Wish I knew, but I don’t think a query on my part would be productive since they would want to maintain confidentiality. They might share it, but I couldn’t say anything. Such is life, eh? :slight_smile:

Note that this is a portfolio service. There are now 43 stocks in the portfolio with allocations from 0.4% to 8.6% (that high number is an outlier stock, up nearly 160%…which, interestingly, is my #1 allocation in my own portfolio with an even higher allocation). Some of them are favorites on this board, some are fairly unknown to me…and upon brief examination, I’m satisfied with not owning them. I can’t be more specific.

Rob
Rule Breaker / Market Pass Home Fool & STMP/MTH Maintenance Coverage Fool
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

1 Like

Rising Stars is still open (Just ask Tom or Vicki) and isn’t/wasn’t a microcap portfolio.
Among their first recommendations were Coupa and The Trade Desk as I remember.
These are the best performers so far and I most all the rest (and Coupa) to load up on TTD and MDB (a later recommendation).
Still have a couple more Saas stocks from their recommendations which are doing well but very small positions.
Cheers, PB.