Amidst the noise, I took a weekend to learn and listen to one of the best investors of our time I have admired @altcap!
Founder of $AGC SPAC and one of the earliest Investors in $ZG $SNOW.
Below are a few things I learned: THREAD 👇
Background:
He started out as a securities lawyer and graduated from Harvard MBA. Founded a couple starts-ups early.
In 08' - He founded Altimeter Capital, where they focus on investing in companies in the tech sector. They manage both public and private growth equity funds.
Since 2011, holding an equal-weight portfolio of his fund’s top-20 13F positions would have generated Avg. annual returns of 30%.
Brad was one of the best earliest investors that identified potentials of
$FB, $ZG , $UBER $EXPE ,Bytedance, $PDD
Before any of them became big!
My personal takeaways:
1/ At the core of his principles: Essentialism.
- He prioritizes Focus.
- Essentialism for him is being focused on doing a few things & doing them well.
- Similar to his investments, 75% of his portfolio are on his very best ideas.
- Ignores the rest
2/ Extremely focused on the long-term:
- He looks out 3-5 years, Ignores the noise of next 3-5 weeks
- Ex. Around March 19, he was actively investing in companies while many funds were freaking out. He didn't care abt the next couple of weeks rather he was looking out in years
3/ On identifying investments:
- He believes in finding companies that could be multi-year compounders, in secular growth areas while owning them in sufficient concentration to move the needle!
- Find companies where the size of the prize & the impact on the world is massive.
4/ Allow those investments to grow:
- He avoids trading around his best ideas whenever there is a short-noise around earnings or news
- He allow those companies to compound over years. This is how he turned $5M ---> to $11B on $SNOW! Similarly on his early $ZG and other ideas
5/ Importance of secret insights and core competence:
- He never invests in any company without having a special insight different from the consensus based off his research
- His invests primarily if its within his circle of competence and areas he feels he has an advantage.
6/ His investment themes/ideas:
- The rise of consumer applications and internet
- The potential of the life-sciences industry
- Believes we are in the early innings of the Cloud & digital transformation
- Growth of the consumer & eCommerce in China
Some of the best resources to learn more about Brad!
I enjoyed listening to two podcasts by @patrick_oshag - Patrick is a great interviewer and enjoyed listening.
- Rev of $89M vs Exp $75M Exp. (16% beat)
- 146% Growth YoY (58% organic growth as MP reps $31M
- EPS: $0.21 vs Exp $0.17 (23% beat) - 425% earnings growth
Cont'd - Hope you find helpful! - 🙌
1b/ Financials $APPS:
- GP expansion – 166% – due to content
- GM 43% - content media, apps business based on revenue mix is driving margin expansion
- Ops. margin expanded by 23.2%.
- Adj. EBITDA up by 302% Y/Y to $22.51M; and margin expanded by 25.4%
- FCF keeps improving
2a/
- Overall International revenue is gradually representing a much higher share than US
- Revenue Per Device (RPD Growth) which is key metric is growing - nearly 70% growth in Int'l
- Int'l supply revenue for media grew 200% YoY
- Primarily from partners such as Samsung, Xaomi
Digital Turbine, a platform provider for building apps, enabling content discovery and mobile digital ads
Why I'm bullish L-T: 1/ They have a strong competitive position within the mobile operator-advertiser niche for android devices.
Cont'd -
2/ $APPS Growth Pillars:
- SingleTap is a new product where a user can automatically download an app in a single-tap without visiting the actual app
- Mobile Posse: Product that goes natively on a phone and includes news, sports, ads etc.
- 5G roll-out and Increased phone ads
3/ $APPS software is installed on over 450M+ phones, and this total is increasing by 20M phones per month
$APPS is increasingly building additional revenue streams, such as providing content for carriers such as Sprint
Major clients include Samsung, AT&T, Verizon, Uber.