It looked at first like October might have been my first down month since April of this year, but in the past week or so things have turned around once again to end with a monthly return for October alone of +8%.
Year to date I am now up 159% for the entire portfolio - which feels absolutely great.
Since January 2024 I am up 350% - which is 4 and a half times more than I had just 22 months ago! What a great ride this is.
My goal remains to stay fully invested in a very condensed portfolio consisting of truly great companies who are growing revenue and profits rapidly and for me just to continue to let the portfolio compound to new all time highs.
My Current allocations are
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Nebius (NBIS) 28%
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AppLovin (APP) 18%
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Celestica (CLS) 14%
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AsteraLabs (ALAB) 13%
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IREN (IREN) 11%
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NVIDIA (NVDA) 9%
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Electro Optic Systems (EOS:ASX) 5%
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HIVE Digital (HIVE) 2%
Changes this month
I did make quite a few changes during the month - my biggest change was to trim Nebius for the first time since I had purchased it back in January.
It had grown to over 50% of my portfolio at one point in October!! As you will know from my previous write ups, I have been reluctant to trim it - but I felt that having over half of my portfolio in one stock was too much. Nebius fell a little during the middle of the month and I missed the chance to trim at the very top of $140 a share - but I did trim it a few weeks ago at $127- roughly where it sits today.
I also sold COMM and then I re bought EOS. I then purchased more ALAB and topped up APP and NVDA. But with most of the proceeds from my Nebius sale I purchased new positions (for me) in IREN and HIVE - thanks to wpr101 for those.
Nebius (28%)
Nebius continues to establish itself as a serious AI-infrastructure neo-cloud provider— building GPU cloud and data-center capacity. Growth remains eye-popping.
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Revenue growth YOY: 766% →466%→385%→625%
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Non-GAAP profitability: Adjusted EBITDA improved to –$21 m from –$58 m in Q1 - up 64% YoY.
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Gross margin: minus Toloka reached their best yet at 71%.
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ARR: 429% YoY to $439m in Q2’25 up from $83m in Q2’24.
Management expects Nebius to come out with positive adjusted EBITDA in 2026 - which is a sign of disciplined expansion to me.
It is their ARR (annualised revenue run rate) numbers that will continue to be the ones to watch - and I expect all of their forward metrics to be even higher in their next ER following the news of the Microsoft deal since over this past Q. They are due to report on Nov 11 and I am expecting another leg up after this next ER.
Nebius remains my highest conviction stock. I continue to believe, as I have done all year now, that significant upside still remains. They have just reported on Oct 20 that they have successfully brought NVIDIA Blackwell to Israel with one of the country’s first AI infrastructure deployments.
Then just a few days later they reported that “Avride secures strategic investment and other commitments of up to $375 million, backed by Uber and Nebius.”
They are a full stack (not just bare metal) global AI provider building full-stack infrastructure for the global AI industry.
Their core business, as they describe themselves, “is an AI-native cloud platform built for intensive AI workloads. With proprietary software and hardware designed in-house, Nebius AI Cloud gives AI builders the compute, storage, managed services, and tools they need to build, tune, and run their models.
Nebius also has additional businesses that operate under their own distinctive brands:
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Avride — one of the most experienced teams developing autonomous driving technology for self-driving cars and delivery robots.
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TripleTen — a leading edtech player in the U.S. and certain other markets, re-skilling people for careers in tech.
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They also hold equity stakes in other businesses including ClickHouse and Toloka.”
I have always liked their other irons in the fire - especially AVRide which has the potential to be much much bigger in the future. I think that a year from now we should easily see $200 a share.
AppLovin (18%)
AppLovin has had a more difficult month with a probe from the SEC being reported and the stock has dipped around 9% over the past 4 weeks - but the company keeps executing extremely well from mobile games toward the more high-margin ad-tech software. The Axon engine and broader marketing-platform stack continue to deliver.
I am hoping they will be able to shed more light on the alleged probe, if they are allowed, in their next ER. There is a lot we do not know - but I have held APP long enough to trust the management. It has been in my portfolio since April 2024 when I first purchased it at $75. Over the time since I have bought it many more times. It was once my largest holding - now it is second only to Nebius.
In fact I bought some more just last week at just over $600 and I will continue to hold all my APP shares until the numbers or evidence point otherwise. Adam Foroughi has shown himself to be an excellent CEO - and I am sure that APP will come out of this stronger than before.
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Revenue growth YoY: 70% →73%→71%→77%
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Free Cash Flow growth YoY: 182% →105%→113%→73%
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Adjusted EBITDA growth YoY: 72% →78%→83%→69%
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Gross margin: around 88% in Q2, up from about 74% a year ago.
Profitability scales beautifully with revenue, and the advertising business now drives nearly all profits. Execution here remains best-in-class for a company of this size and scale.
Celestica (14%)
Celestica has just had yet another solid Q where they beat expectations on the top and bottom line, and raised guidance yet again. It is firing on all cylinders.The market once again liked what it saw and the stock has risen another 12% this week alone.
Celestica keeps outperforming expectations as AI and cloud hardware demand pull through its CCS segment. Year to date this stock is up 267% and nearly 400% over the past 12 months! I have held it for 18 months and it continues to do very well for me - even though it is overlooked by many. On many days over this past month it has been the only bit of green in a sea of red.
- Total Revenue growth YoY: 19% →20%→21%→28%
Which is clearly not the largest on this board, but their Cloud and communications services which is now 72% of total revenue is a much more promising:
YoY 30% →27%→28%→43%.
That is where their growth is coming from.
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EPS growth YoY: 44% →44%→54%→52%
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GAAP operating margin: 10.2% in Q3’25, up from 5.5% a year ago.
They raised guidance for all metrics, as well as for annual revenue guide for next year - which they will undoubtedly raise again - which is projected to be at least 32% YoY for FY 26.
As their CFO said on their CC “Our HPS business generated revenues of $1.4 billion in the third quarter, representing growth of 79% YoY and accounted for 44% of total company revenue. The very strong growth was driven by accelerating volumes in our ramping 800G switch programs.”
IREN (11%)
IREN is a new holding for me as I stated above. I had been reluctant to purchase anything to do with Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin itself for a long time (because I had my head in the sand and I didn’t understand it) - but it is their transition into AI Data centres, along with their blistering growth, that has gotten me interested. There has been much written on the board about this of late - so I don’t need to repeat it all here. I was waiting for it to drop as it just seemed to keep on rising. I bought at $59 last week. If I had waited a little longer I could have got it cheaper still when it fell to $50. IREN’s transition from Bitcoin mining to GPU cloud is accelerating. Execution risk remains, but the operating leverage looks huge if utilization stays high.
NVIDIA (9%)
NVIDIA remains the anchor of my portfolio — it is the clear winner in AI compute. Even with product transitions, NVIDIA keeps setting new records.. Blackwell should add another leg of growth heading into 2026. As I said in my update last month - it is the one stock that I pay little attention to between earnings reports. It is only 3 months ago that they became the world’s first $4T company - and now over the past few days they have become the world’s first $5T company! Wow - just amazing on every front. Demand for their GPU’s appears insatiable.
Electro Optic Systems (5%)
EOS gives me a small slice of defense and space tech. It’s less consistent quarter-to-quarter but has valuable optionality. As I wrote in my previous monthly update, it is a small Australia-based company that is the world leader in shooting down drones by bullet and laser. Their marketing slogan is: “Nobody kills drones like EOS”. They claim they can shoot down a coin from earth’s orbit with a laser. They have recently won a few major contracts - including supplying anti drone weapons into Ukraine. Their revenue is lumpy and they only report semi-annually. But contracts and backlog remain strong, and execution seems steady.
Using lasers to attack drones is significantly cheaper than more conventional means. As we have seen so sadly in recent times, drone warfare has become much more widespread with sometimes hundreds of drones launched against targets at the same time. If you are unprepared, you have to shoot down a drone costing as little as $1,000 by using a military rocket costing upwards of $100,000 or more. Ukraine was in that situation at the start of the conflict.That is where the high energy laser weapons of EOS come in - many of them have been in operation in Ukraine, and around the world, over the last year or so.
Their backlog is significant and they claim they have not lost a contract in recent years.
Nevertheless I am keeping the size of this allocation small and this feels right to me given the volatility in the SP. The stock initially doubled and then tripled for me in a matter of only a few weeks - only to come back down again after that. But as of today I am up by more than 100% on EOS having bought at 2.90 AUD in July - where today it sits at 6.21 AUD.
Market cap is small at only 1B Australian dollars (about 710m US dollars) but the revenue growth on their last Q, Q2/25 was up 63% YoY.
But at only a 5% holding for me I feel confident that the downside risk is minimal and the potential upside is significant.
The CEO has just been interviewed on an Australian TV News channel.
From their linked in channel:
𝗧𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗣𝗹𝘂𝘀 | 𝗘𝗢𝗦 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 - 𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻!
Australia’s leadership in laser defence was front and centre on Network Ten’s Ten News Plus last night, as Carrie-Anne Greenbank visited our Canberra high-tech facility to see how EOS’ Apollo high energy laser is redefining counter-drone warfare.
Featuring insight from Dr Andreas Schwer, EOS CEO, and Dr Dr Oleksandra Molloy of UNSW Canberra, the story explores how laser technology is changing the economics of modern warfare.
A proud moment for Australian defence innovation.
Watch the segment: https://lnkd.in/gECaX2Z2
Overall thoughts
My portfolio remains tightly focused on high-growth, high-margin technology names. I’m incredibly pleased with my +159% YTD performance, but the more important part of course is that the businesses themselves keep producing strong results — which is the reason my portfolio keeps compounding as it does.
That wraps up October for me. Thank you for reading this far. And I look forward to reading lots of other end of month reviews on Saul’s excellent board.
Best,
Jonathan
My previous portfolio reviews:
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-end-of-september-portfolio-review/121474
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-end-of-august-portfolio-review/121063
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-end-of-july-portfolio-review/120367
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathan-s-early-june-portfolio-review/118951
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-early-may-portfolio-review/117982
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-february-portfolio-review/113227
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-early-december-portfolio-review/111063
https://discussion.fool.com/t/jonathans-first-portfolio-review-and-four-year-update/106666
https://discussion.fool.com/t/my-brief-investing-story/52814