EPAM

Someone mentioned EPAM but I can’t remember who or where. If it was you, how do you deal with the issue of a large part of their workforce being in Russia and the Ukraine, and do you see that as a problem, considering what is going on there?

Hi Saul,

I hold EPAM and I noted it in my writeup. It’s seen phenomenal growth. Q3 revenues were up some 38% YoY. Q3 was around $195M while Q2 was $175M. They use Eastern European software engineers (these guys are good!) and most of their facilities are several 100 miles from the conflict zone. So far, there’s been little impact of the fighting. This is a US based company so sanctions don’t impact it. An all out war or a larger conflict would have an impact on its operations though so there’s some geo-political risk. But most of the business it does is with large multinationals. It’s also expanded its workforce to other areas via recent acquisitions.

This one has substantially less risk than Yandex and you see that in the stock price action. While the Yandex share price has plummeted to account for the geo-political risks EPAM has not budged much except for a bit at the very start of the conflict.

This came through in Hidden Gems, currently my favorite hunting ground for ideas. They really are finding the best of the lot in the small/mid cap investing landscape.

Anirban.

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