December’s indiscriminate sell-off continued into January. My YTD low was -34.5% but after a couple strong trading days to end the month I finished January -24.5%. That’s -40% since the start of 2021. The market sentiment feels like it is changing and the gross over-selling of high growth companies seems to be recognized. Some of the tax-loss harvesting money seems to be making it back into the market now that the 30 day wash period has been satisfied. My only major change happened the first week of January—I closed out my position in MNDY, which I outlined my reasoning for in a previous post. I took full positions in S and FUBO with that money.
December EOM Positions
MNDY 20.2%
BILL 14.9%
PATH 14.2%
UPST 13.9%
PLTR 13.5%
VERI 12.4%
DOCN 11.1%
January EOM Positions
PATH 14.7%
BILL 14.5%
S 13.8%
UPST 13.4%
PLTR 12.6%
VERI 11.7%
DOCN 10.5%
FUBO 8.8%
January Holdings
MNDY:
MNDY was a significant early January holding change for me—Ultimately I wanted out of the workshare space and into more U.S based companies and opted to take a full position in SentinelOne and Fubo. MNDY was my largest position, which was unsettling for me and often when I find myself second guessing a holding frequently I move out of it. MNDY has continued to put up fantastic numbers, it just doesn’t have a place in my portfolio for now.
BILL:
“Our mission is to make it simple to connect and do business. We are champions of small and midsize businesses (SMBs). We are a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates complex back-office financial operations for SMBs. By transforming how SMBs manage their cash inflows and outflows, we create efficiencies and free our customers to run their businesses.”
BILL is another one of those companies with incredible metrics—they have massive growth both organically, and through acquisitions, but I especially like their improving margins along with the acquisitions. I’m not concerned short term with the share-price cooldown as the business is executing exceptionally. The B2B space makes sense to me and I believe the natural progression of digitalization supports BILL’s future continued growth. I think CloudL does a great job representing BILL here:
TMF: Re: Bill.com | Q2’22 Priors / Saul’s Investing Discussions (fool.com)
? Q1 Core Revenue Increased 164% Year-Over-Year
? Q1 Organic Core Revenue Increased 78% Year-Over-Year
? Q1 Transaction Fees Increased 319% Year-Over-Year
? Q1 Organic Transaction Fees Increased 127% Year-Over-Year
UPST:
I added to my position materially near the end of December. I know there is a lot of fear and uncertainty related to UPST’s revenue model, but I think finance and fintech could be as strong a sector as cybersecurity over the next 10 years. I consider customer acquisitions and partnerships as a form of currency or recurring revenue. Essentially 1 customer = “1 recurring revenue stream”—when they add 2 more customers in a quarter their “ARR” = 3. Of course actual loan volume isn’t guaranteed, and it will be cyclical to some extent—but their expansion into automotive and eventually mortgage will diversify them enough to create more stability. I see UPST reaching a market cap easily over $100B over the next few years. I’ll be watching the automotive lending sector and any tailwind related to the expansion of EVs.
Lending Volumes
Q4 ’20 Q1’21 Q2’21 Q3’21
123,396 169,750 286,864 362,780
PATH: Market Cap $25.5B Revenue Growth 40% YoY Gross margins 83% DBNRR 144%
UiPath is the leading RPA provider in the world—What is RPA? I’m glad you asked—
“Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software technology that makes it easy to build, deploy, and manage software robots that emulate humans actions interacting with digital systems and software. Just like people, software robots can do things like understand what’s on a screen, complete the right keystrokes, navigate systems, identify and extract data, and perform a wide range of defined actions. But software robots can do it faster and more consistently than people, without the need to get up and stretch or take a coffee break.”
PATH had very positive earnings in December—ARR grew 12.5% QoQ and revenue grew 12.9% QoQ. Guidance was even more impressive with Revenue guidance for 28% Sequential growth. PATH has announced recent partnerships with SNOW and CRWD, and continues to dominate the RPA space. With nearly $2.0B in cash and no debt, this founder-led company is the market leader in the space. The conference call was very bullish and guidance, even at 28% is almost guaranteed to be soft as they repeatedly emphasize they only “guide” for contracts they already have in front of them. I’m looking for sequential growth of 33+%, but wouldn’t be surprised to see 35% and $300M in revenue. PATH has grown ARR by 10-14% sequentially for the past 8 quarters. I like the RPA space and think with the R&D in AI and ML there could be yet another runway for growth over the coming years.
I know there is some concern with PATH’s revenue structure related to licensing, but the ARR remains strong and well-defined. I have only seen positive sector news related to RPA and UiPath’s product offerings. With the on-going overhaul of the workforce and workplace, I see RPA as a natural and inevitable development and like the opportunity in the space. I also appreciate my companies with less debt and stronger financial positions in the current environment.
VERI: Founder led Market cap under $1B YoY Rev Growth 44% Gross Margins 82%
“Veritone is a leading provider of artificial intelligence technology and solutions. The company’s proprietary operating system, AIware, orchestrates an expanding ecosystem of machine learning models to transform audio, video and other data sources into actionable intelligence."
Veritone continues to build partnerships and gain more analysts’ attention in the growing AI / ML space. There are some interesting opportunities here in the metaverse space (speculation), as well as the entertainment / movie / tv industry as producers pursue the opportunity to produce a movie and through the use of speech / language technology translate that technology to multiple languages. Veritone’s technology will even translate using the actor’s voice, essentially removing the need for voice over actors and maintaining the authentic tone and speech patterns of the original actors.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4477376-veritone-underappre…
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3783949-digital-turbine-fathom…
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211214005004/en/Ver…
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/predictions-pod-2022/i…
Q1’20 Q2’20 Q3’20 Q4’20 Q1’21 Q2’21 Q3’21
REV. $M 11.9 13.27 15.72 16.82 18.3 19.21 22.6
QOQ -4.2% 11.51% 18.46% 7.0% 8.8% 4.97% 17.96%
YOY -1.82% 8.13% 22.75% 35.11% 53.96% 44.75% 44.13%
Veritone, Inc. - Home
DOCN: marketcap $11B Rev. Growth 36% YoY Gross Margin 69% DBNRR 116%
“DigitalOcean simplifies cloud computing so developers and businesses can spend more time building software that changes the world. With its mission-critical infrastructure and fully managed offerings, DigitalOcean helps developers, startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rapidly build, deploy and scale applications to accelerate innovation and increase productivity and agility. DigitalOcean combines the power of simplicity, community, open source, and customer support so customers can spend less time managing their infrastructure and more time building innovative applications that drive business growth.”
DOCN is demonstrating acceleration in growth and improved DBNRR. Customer growth is a little slower than I would like to see (7%YoY), and so are the gross margins, below 70%-- But again, revenue is accelerating and existing customers are spending more money.
DOCN-Q3-2021-Earnings-Presentation-vF.pdf (q4cdn.com)
One I will keep an eye on going forward.
PLTR market cap: $27.5B Rev Growth: 36% YoY Gross Margin 78% Home | Palantir
“Palantir Technologies Inc. builds and deploys software platforms for the intelligence community in the United States to assist in counterterrorism investigations and operations. The company provides Palantir Gotham, a software platform for government operatives in the defense and intelligence sectors, which enables users to identify patterns hidden deep within datasets, ranging from signals intelligence sources to reports from confidential informants, as well as facilitates the handoff between analysts and operational users, helping operators plan and execute real-world responses to threats that have been identified within the platform. It also offers Palantir Foundry, a platform that transforms the ways organizations operate by creating a central operating system for their data; and allows individual users to integrate and analyze the data they need in one place. Palantir Technologies Inc. was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.”
PLTR is a software / AI company with heavy government exposure—They recently went public and are expanding into the commercial / enterprise world— I look at PLTR as a leading AI and software company trusted by the most powerful entity in the world (U.S Government) with nearly two decades of R&D and Innovation to create the leading technology funded by the U.S government, which is now available to the commercial market. I believe there is a massive runway for growth as highlighted by the recent commercial expansion listed below. PLTR is founder-led with nearly $2.5B in cash and zero debt.
I wrote a recent post on PLTR here: TMF: Re: Palantir vs Snowflake / Saul’s Investing Discussions (fool.com) – there were some good follow ups in the thread, particularly posted by TMF ticker guide that’s worth checking out.
FUBO
Fubo is a sports-centric streaming TV service with new expansion into casual interactive sports wagering. I posted after last quarter’s earnings here: TMF: Re: FUBO Q3 Earnings Report / Saul’s Investing Discussions (fool.com)
FUBO is still in cash burn, but the metrics are improving. After reaching 1 million subscribers—a huge milestone—their cost per user of content will decrease materially at their next content contract renewals. Also FUBO has produced leading viewership hours per user which will continue to drive ad revenue growth and margin improvement.
I felt FUBO’s Q&A at the 24th annual Needham Growth Conference was particularly enlightening.
fuboTV Inc. (FUBO) CEO David Gandler Presents at 24th Annual Needham Growth Conference (Transcript) | Seeking Alpha
My holdings are a fair bit different than the primary board holders, and I’m okay with that. Some of how I learn and grow is by finding my own way and following my own convictions. I believe we each have to invest in such a way that makes sense to us. I’m excited for the journey ahead and I’m confident in time my holdings will grow more similar to the board members’ – and I look forward to gaining the understanding they have to lead me to more similar a portfolio.
What makes a joke a “dad joke?”
When it becomes apparent… (And you probably thought my portfolio ROI was the joke)
Happy Earnings Season.
Peace-Health-Prosperity.
MillennialFalcon