I'm a $FVRR bull and I like how the premarket is reacting.
Let's digest Q3 earnings in a short 🧵👇
Starting off with a sucessstory of german eCommerce company Westwing integrating Fiverr Business into their Design workflow permanently after trying it out.
I like the emphasis on Fiverr Business at the start of the presentation. Going for that $UPWK marketshare 😏
Strong growth metrics across the board:
Revenue up 42% compared to a strong Covid Q3
Active Buyers up 33%
Spend per Buyer up 20%
Already impressive Take rate improving by another 140bps
High gross margin of 83%
180 bps Adjusted EBITDA Margin improvement
Great!
Q3 Highlights:
Stoke Talent and CreativeLive aquisitions to improve freelancers experience in the multichannel freelancing strategy.
Fiverr Workspace launched to help freelancers manage all aspects of their business
New brand campaigns
First ever ESG report
Full year guidance increased!
Revenue 5% increase projected
Adjusted EBITDA 60% (!) increased bottomline
That being said, They pretty much went back to the Full year guidance prior to the lowered guidance in Q2.
As suspected in Q2, management was just being cautious.
$FVRR emphasizing their long term strategy of being THE platform for freelancers to be at.
With Stoke they want to allow freelancers to manage their offline gigs and gigs on other platforms.
Get them into the ecosystem now and eventually the money will come in.
Very important metric. Buyer retention. The lifetime value of a customer keeps increasing.
Repeat buyers made up 58% of revenue, up 3 pp from 20 (55%).
Spend per buyer is up 20% to $234. High value buyers (>$500) contribute 62% of revenue.
The flywheel keeps accelerating
Once again highlighting the Stoke Talent aquisition. Get a foot into the door with bigger customers and offline freelancers and eventually convert them ( or sell them software solutions)
Subscriptions are gaining traction with over 50000 gigs having a subscription option. This recurring revenue will increase the life time value of a buyer substantially, as seen by 20% of subscription orders being 6+months.
Some remarks about marketing and growing the community.
$FVRR sees pandemic trends like eCommerce channels and 3D illustrations with continues strong growth. Digital transformation is not a Covid only thing, it's here to stay!
Something I like to see as a $SPOT shareholder: Fast innovation iterations. 55 new product features got released in Q3 with a focus on personalization to make the user experience better and keep people coming for more.
$FVRR is looking to break the language barrier by pushing translation services.
Already showing 10% improved results on the spanish website.
Operating expenses/revenue trending down. The business is scaling up and becoming more efficient.
To summarize: I'm a very happy owner of $FVRR with these results. The flywheel keeps accelerating, take rates keep improving and the ecosystem keeps expanding.
So many painful mistakes, but so many important lessons learned: 2022 was a very turbulent year where many of my beliefs were shattered and I learned a lot about myself and my investment process.
Let's review my 6 learnings of 2022 🧵👇
First off, if you want to read this in more detail, check out my @SubstackInc post about this
1st I learned that long-term compounders with a long runway are much more suitable for me personally than the fast-growing tech stocks I primarily owned in 2020/21. Companies with good moats and great management are much easier to hold over long timeframes.
Napco Security Technologies is a fast-growing high-quality small-cap flying under the radar of most investors.
They are in essential markets and are growing a recurring revenue stream. Let me show you why I bought $NSSC after it’s already up 1500% in the last decade. A quick🧵
If you prefer to read this in an article format, I did publish a more detailed version in my @SubstackInc 👇
Napco was founded in 1969 in Amityville, New York by Richard Soloway, who to this day is the CEO with 20% of shares outstanding (remaining management team owns another 2%).
The difference good Capital Allocation can make.
How $RICK went from 21 years of dead money to a 10-bagger in 6 years. A small 🧵
In the first 21 years, the company maximized revenue growth and grew at all costs, often by diluting shareholders. Even though revenues increased 33x, FCF went nowhere and the stock was flat
In 2016 @RicksCEO embraced good capital allocation after reading William Thorndikes "Outsider CEOs" and focused on FCF/shares growth instead of revenues.
Sonova is a high-quality Swiss compounder that nobody talks about.
They are the leader in hearing aid solutions 🦻 and here is why I invested 3% of my portfolio into $SOON.
So sit back and hear me out (had to do it) 👇
Sonova was founded in 1947 in Stäfa 🇨🇭and since then has become the global leader in hearing aid solutions, an industry with long secular tailwinds (aging population) and a very underserved market.
Sonova has 4 segments for the different needs for hearing solutions:
- Consumer Hearing: $SOON recently acquired @Sennheiser consumer division for conventional headphones and other consumer goods.
- Hearing Instruments: This part focuses on conventional hearing aid solutions 1/2
Why I invested 3% into a Swedish Serial Acquirer that achieved a 31% CAGR since its SECOND IPO in 2014
A small thread about $LIFCO 🧵
Wait who?
Lifco started in 1946 as a medical equipment company, but the real story starts in 1998 when Carl Bennet took a majority stake in the business. He then in 2000 took it private to do restructuring and IPOed again in 2014
What do they do?
Lifco is a serial acquirer and long-term owner of companies in the Dental, Demotion & Tools and System Solutions industry.
Over the years Lifco purchased hundreds of companies and has a widely diversified portfolio
Serial acquirer of Strip clubs and a sports bar chain.
Let's get into why I decided to buy them. A quick thread 👇
I found out about RCI Hospitality holdings through one of my recent tweets, asking for companies that follow my ideal capital allocation framework. Thanks to @21stCentValue for suggesting $RICK
$RICK used to be a mediocre company that chased revenue by acquiring mediocre clubs in bad deals and other ways to increase revenue. In 2016 @RicksCEO "saw the light" and changed the whole capital allocation strategy of the company.