My portfolio currently stands at,
Super Micro (SMCI) - 20%
Elf (ELF) - 12.2%
Celsius (CELH) - 11%
Axon (AXON) - 10.1%
Samsara (IOT) - 9.7%
Cloudflare (NET) - 9.6%
Hims & Hers (HIMS) - 8.5%
Nvidia (NVDA) - 6.6%
TransMedics (TMDX) - 6.5%
Monday (MNDY) - 3.2%
Beam Global (BEEM) - 2.4%
This month the biggest changes I made were to dramatically reduce Monday, sell AeroVironment (AVAV), sell Amprius (AMPX), and I also traded in and out of GigaCloud Technologies (GCT).
Monday (MNDY)
After reviewing Monday’s earnings upon release I reduced my position some and somewhat forgot about what I didn’t like there. I took another pass recently at reviewing their earnings this week and have decided to sell off most of my position there. There’s still a few lots that need to lap one year to get long term capital gains so I may keep some small allocation until those get to one year of holding. Reviewing their last report again there was a lot I did not like,
- Overall NRR declined slightly to 110%, “reflecting continued macroeconomic headwinds”
- One analyst said, "The underlying business is healthier than the guidance seems to suggest (So I’m unsure why the company is guiding so low)
- Still seeing lingering macro headwinds where customers are cautious spending
- Expect customer spend to stabilize in Q2 (but not Q1)
- The first time they’ve ever done a price increase (they sound unsure about this and what the result will be)
- Analyst, "You guys are guided for a base case of high 20%, low 30% in the medium term. Taking out the price increase you are guiding for 25%
- Analyst, “Q4 was the lowest magnitude beat you’ve had as a public company”
- Analyst “Everyone is trying to reconcile what happened in Q4, and then obviously it seems like that’s leading to a more conservative guide for the year”
- The macroeconomic headwinds still exist (3rd time mentioned in the call)
- Customers are still cautious with their spend, probably an impact on Q4 results (so they aren’t sure what impact it had?)
- “Q1 you always put more on the performance marketing because this impacts the entire year” (So spend is going up in Q1, but macro is supposed to impact Q1 still)
- Haven’t seen an impact yet from political situation in Israel (the “yet” seemed to imply maybe in future Qs, they said previously 8% of company in active reserve, hard to imagine folks are 100% concentrated on work though)
Monday’s guidance seemed to confuse the analysts and many of those analysts called them out on it. I’m not getting why Monday is talking about macro headwinds a lot on this call because other SaaS companies I own like Cloudflare and Samsara didn’t mention this at all.
AeroVironment (AVAV)
I also sold my position in AeroVironment this quarter about a few weeks after they reported what looked like pretty good earnings. The stock up-trended nearly 50%+ after the report although I did not feel this type of rise in price was merited based on the report. They beat on revenue slightly and significantly on Adj EPS but their guide was not raised that much.
Additionally many of their future contracts seem stuck in place. The obvious one being US spending to help foreign militaries but they used the exact same numbers as last quarter for describing engaging with foreign governments. It’s still 20 governments interested and 7 of them going through the review process. The defense industry moves pretty slow and possibly not a great fit for a concentrated growth style of investing.
The last point was their current guide for next Q will be flat compared to year over year. The had a huge quarter on the year they are lapping coming up, so while growth of revenue was ~40% yoy this quarter. A best case scenario for next earnings would probably be 10%+ yoy revenue.
Amprius Technologies (AMPX)
The company’s share price has been trending down almost daily for the last couple of months on no news. The last earnings report seemed decent with both revenue and gross margin improving which is what I was looking for.
There were two items I did not like though, the first was customers adds. On the prior quarter they went from 27 to 38 customers with 18 of these customers being new ones, over 35%+ customer growth! This quarter they went from 38 customers to 41 customers with 16 of the customers being new. So total customers barely budged up and less new ones overall.
They also said on the call that the expenses from building their Colorado plant will impact the margins and bottom line for at least a year+. It probably should have been obvious this was the case, but them actually saying this made me realize the market will likely count this against them. I’m going to leave this company at the top of my watchlist and see where it goes over the coming quarters. I could see eventually getting back in a year from now if things go well and the company has accelerated. Unfortunately I can’t leave my money here with the price going down on no explanations from the company.
GigaCloud (GCT)
I made a mistake on my buy in this company that they released numbers on Friday and did the conference call on Monday - something I’ve never seen before. I was familiar with this company for the last two quarters and liked the previous earnings and was getting familiar with the company. The last earnings numbers blew all previous records away and the stock rose a lot that day where I bought some shares. However, on Monday I got to reading the call and did not like what I heard as much after hearing that call compared to the prior two earnings.
I’ve got a full detailed writeup of this company here. After doing that write up I realized I had more questions than answers. Although I’m still intrigued by this company, revenue is growing at 95% and they have a P/E ratio of 12, from a valuation perspective this company is compelling. I don’t know enough about their acquisitions though to be confident, and don’t want to use any more time to investigate currently. GCT is back on the watchlist.
This month I read some books by Mark Minervini: Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard, Think and Trade like a Champion, and Momentum Masters. They aren’t that long of books, and I think the most valuable one for me was Momentum Masters which interviews Mark and 3 other traders as a round table.
To be clear these are trading books and not Saul style investment or for long term investing. However, they do overlap a bit on stock selection and concentration of a portfolio. What is interesting to be is that traders and Mark use screens to determine if a company has good fundamentals. He is highly skeptical of any material the company publishes itself but seems to think that institutions have some secret knowledge of companies. Not once is it ever recommended to listen or read transcripts of the earnings calls.
In many places he suggests how incredibly risky it is to hold through earnings of a company, but then simultaneously shows technical charts where he bought and it’s obvious the gap up or gains he got were from going through an earnings.
Additionally, I found out he runs Minervini Private Access with costs about $1,000 a month and you “get to trade alongside Mark”. I’m actually surprised this isn’t considered illegal. It seems like he makes the trade, and then recommends to his customers to make the same trade, while also collecting a big monthly fee from these same users.
I wouldn’t really recommend these books for this board, but I’ll keep the board posted if I find something worthwhile.
Going through the rest of my companies,
Super Micro (SMCI)
Still very confident in Super Micro and their prospects. I’ve trimmed my position probably five or six times now although it doesn’t look that way from my allocation. I’ll likely be holding till the next earnings, not a ton of updates here.
Elf (ELF)
I reviewed their earnings and a conference they presented at. I still really like this company and their prospects a lot, growing bottom line faster than top line is impressive.
Celsius (CELH)
The company seems pretty much on track, I wish they gave guidance and us investors a bit more to go off of. I reviewed the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference they went to, but haven’t had a chance to write this up yet. Biggest standout was their product originally catered to mainly women and fitness. Initially they thought it was too much of a fitness product to even be in convenience stores. Now convenience presents a huge opportunity. Also they just launched in New Zealand and Australia. Lots of room to grow here in new markets like Canada and the UK too.
Axon (AXON)
I liked their most recent report, pretty well covered by the board. They were also a conference recently too that I plan to look into.
Samsara (IOT)
Another company with a solid report this earnings season. Hopefully they are past the mishandling of their lawsuit and moving on. Not a ton to add here except that I like this niche they are in a lot for software that models physical operations.
Cloudflare (NET)
After reviewing their latest earnings again and a conference they were at I’m extremely interested in this company again. I’ll be looking to add to my position as I think their opportunity in the AI space is enormous.
Hims and Hers (HIMS)
This is a new company for me which I’ve gained a lot of confidence in. Have a detailed write up here which explains my thoughts.
Nvidia (NVDA)
I’ve been adding to Nvidia recently. This presentation at GCT was incredible, the Blackwell chip or platform is 30x as powerful as the state of the art Hopper is! As Jensen says, this is a new industrial revolution. I see this past year as the new Cambrian birth of AI or the next super-cycle of technology, akin to the internet and cloud. This BG2 podcast is excellent and here’s an episode with two silicon valley veterans explaining why they believe AI will be bigger than the internet itself.
I do not see 2-3T as some upper cap on market cap which cannot be surpassed. Recall that just ten years ago we had zero trillion dollar companies. I understand the law of large numbers applies, but if every data center needs to be rebuilt, and the company is releasing new products all the time which are selling well, I think it could reach a 10T market cap in the coming years. I’m surprised to see board members selling at this moment, personally I’ll be waiting for at least one disappointing report before considering selling.
TransMedics (TMDX)
TransMedics seems under-appreciated by the market and I hope I am not missing something. Had a few thoughts on the company and valuation in this thread
I’ve looked into some new companies or recent reports this month on companies I didn’t take a position in,
DraftKings (DKNG)
Revenue growth is impressive and they increase revenue with each state that legalizes sports betting. They have high margins on casino and they acquired a lotto company. They are the leader in the industry and have better EBITDA than competitors. I’m hesitant to invest partly because I think they may be upside already priced in.
TideWater (TDW)
They are in the oil business and doing really well on revenue and bottom line. This used to be a much bigger company years ago, but is now rising again after taking market share form others. Unfortunately I felt the ramp up time to learn this business is enormous to me even though the financials seems compelling. May keep them on a watchlist.
On Holdings AG (ONON)
The sell shoes and apparel, growth is impressive but I’m not sure on their competitive advantage. They faced big currency headwinds this Q. My main concern is they could be like an Under Amour where they started as premium brand but then end of bottom of the barrel.
Ascendis Pharma (ASND)
Revenue growth is impressive, 6M → 15 → 23 → 33 → 47 → 48 → 138. They are a Danish company creating pharma drugs at an incredible rate. Would like to learn more about their secret sauce. The crazy thing is revenue was only 0.5M when this company hit it’s all time high in 2020! I have no idea how it got that much hype early on.
Kaspi (KSPI)
Kazakhstan based merchant with incredible growth who has taken over the entire market in the country. Everybody is on the app there apparently. They are a former transfer from the London Stock Exchange to Nasdaq. Too much of a directional bet on one country which I know little about.