January 2024 Portfolio Review

Total Return: -0.7% YTD (-2.2% vs S&P)

TheStockNovice

Feb 01, 2024

2024 Results:

2024 Monthly Allocations:

Key:

darker green: started during month
lighter green: added during month
yellow: trimmed during month
blue: bought and sold during month
red: position exits
positions >10% in bold

*Please note: I rolled an old 401K worth ~2.5% into the cash balance of this portfolio to start 2024. I’ve shaded that cell to make sure the new cash is represented accurately (and honestly to remind myself as well).

Past recaps:

December 2018 (the one that got things started)

December 2019 (contains links to all 2019 monthly reports)

December 2020 (contains links to all 2020 monthly reports)

December 2021 (contains links to all 2021 monthly reports)

December 2022 (contains links to all 2022 monthly reports)

December 2023 (contains links to all 2023 monthly reports)

Stock Comments:

There wasn’t much in the way of significant updates during January. That should change in February with our first set of earnings reports on tap.

AEHR 0.00%↑ – Aehr’s January 9 earnings report was a disappointing start to 2024. Always a lumpy business, bookings and backlog took a huge hit when a slowdown in electric vehicle production led to a dearth of customer orders this quarter. Not only was management forced to restate its full-year guides down, but the current $3M backlog is nowhere near large enough to carry the load if major orders are further delayed. Simply put, there are other places for our money without the baggage Aehr now carries. I exited this position.

AXON 0.00%↑ – Axon’s January news was the launch of a new Body Workforce line of cameras for workers in industries outside law enforcement. Initially developed in response to a “marked increase” in frontline confrontations during COVID, these new cameras have been trialed in both healthcare and retail with noticeable declines in incidents and escalations. The new line is available for purchase in the US, Australia, Canada, the EU, and the UK.

CELH 0.00%↑ –Celsius began 2024 with its formal expansion into Canada, the UK, and Ireland. The Canadian expansion is being assisted by PepsiCo while the UK and Ireland are in partnership with Suntory Beverage & Food. Increasing international revenue is a big part of CELH’s short-to-medium term thesis, so it’s nice to see the company off to a timely start.

CRWD 0.00%↑ – CrowdStrike’s January saw it earn category Leader status from Gartner Research for endpoint protection platforms. This is CRWD’s fourth consecutive year earning the Leader designation including top marks for “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute.”

CrowdStrike received similar Leader kudos from Forrester Research in its Q1 2024 report on Cloud Workload Security. Of the 13 vendors evaluated, CRWD ranked highest in Strategy while also receiving the highest scores possible in both the Vision and Innovation categories. The report calls CrowdStrike “a great fit for firms looking for agent-first, behavioral-based threat detection that fits into an end-to-end CWS platform.” Given all the attention cybersecurity has received lately, I have no problem with respected third parties touting the benefits of CrowdStrike’s platform.

In a secondary announcement, CRWD added a series of certifications approving its Falcon platform for additional use in the United States, Australia and Europe. The more use cases the better as far as I’m concerned.

DDOG 0.00%↑ – Other than announcing an upcoming Investor Day on February 15, Datadog has been noticeably quiet to start the year. Earnings February 13.

ELF 0.00%↑ – In an interesting move, e.l.f. Beauty recently produced a 15-minute ad as a parody crime documentary. According to the release, “’Cosmetic Criminals’ will be the longest branded content spot to ever run on the big screen, according to National CineMedia, the largest cinema advertising platform in the U.S. Directed by Oscar and Emmy award-nominee Alex Buono (Documentary Now!, Russian Doll) and starring Emmy Award-winning producer and four time-nominated actress Niecy Nash-Betts (Origin, RENO 911!), Nelson Franklin (Veep, New Girl), Necar Zadegan (NCIS, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce) and more.”

The spot appeared on social media – where ELF has an excellent following – along with being shown ahead of the new "Mean Girls" movie at select AMC Theatres. Given the likely cost for the above talent, I’m honestly torn whether this is a marketing masterstroke or (for those who own/owned it) another monday.com Super Bowl ad for what was most likely a limited return. I guess time will tell. Regardless, it’s another bold and original move from ELF’s marketing minds. Earnings February 6.

IOT 0.00%↑ – Samsara started 2024 by being named one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work. CEO Sanjit Biswas received a 96% approval rating with 91% of employees “recommending Samara to a friend.” While performance metrics are the ultimate measure of a company from an investment perspective – which IOT is also doing well, by the way – it is comforting as a shareholder to know IOT is being driven by satisfied and motivated employees.

In a bit of a messier announcement, Samsara also announced it has sued competitor Motive Technologies for intellectual property theft and patent infringement. The suit alleges Motive’s employees illegally accessed Samsara’s proprietary information more than 20,600 times between 2018 and 2022. Though it appears IOT has a legitimate beef, I must admit the way this is being messaged seems meant to make Motive look bad as much as protect Samsara’s rights. Regardless, here’s hoping this leads to a fairly orderly resolution and doesn’t become a significant distraction to the rest of Samsara’s business.

TMDX 0.00%↑ – TransMedics announced it acquired another two more aircraft on December 29 and January 25 for a total cost of $25.8M. According to the filings, that brings the number of company-owned aircraft to twelve, which is well on the way to management’s target of 20. As long as TMDX can show the volume to back it up, I’m more than comfortable with the pace of these purchases considering the company already having the needed cash on hand.

TTD 0.00%↑ – The Trade Desk recently made a senior management adjustment with Tim Sims being named Chief Commercial Officer and Jed Dederick filling Sims’ old role as Chief Revenue Officer. In conjunction with this move, Chief Strategy Officer Samantha Jacobson will join the company’s board. Given all three are TTD veterans, this appears less a shuffling of the deck than a streamlining of responsibilities as the company continues to scale. Management has always been a strength at TTD. I see no reason to think differently after these moves.

ZS 0.00%↑ – Zscaler announced it was the only company to earn a Leader designation in Forrester Research’s Q4 state of the market report for SaaS Security Posture Management. According to the release, Zscaler attained the highest score possible across 12 criteria including Data Protection, Scale, and Shadow-IT detection. Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what all those categories mean either, but I do know there’s value in being a group of one.

Along those same lines, Zscaler released an an industry-first Zero Trust SASE product highlighting its Zero Trust AI technology. As is often the case with ZS, the release contains quite a bit of technospeak which is well over my head. Regardless, the bits I could understand make it clear this development strengthens Zscaler’s offerings. We’ll likely get our next full update when the company reports in late February or early March.

My current watch list…

…in rough order includes monday.com (MNDY), Super Micro Computer (SMCI), MongoDB (MDB), and Snowflake (SNOW).

And there you have it.

Well, whaddya know. Other than some last-second hyperventilation about exactly when the Fed would adjust interest rates (answer: the usual sometime in the future, but we don’t when), January turned out to be a quiet month. Macro news seems to have found its equilibrium while our first few earnings reports showed no real suprises (other than SMCI’s big quarter, of course). The main thing is most commentary from those I follow seems to have shifted from macro concerns back toward business fundamentals and overall company outlooks. That’s always the type of market I like best. Here’s hoping the focus stays that way as we cycle into our next group of earnings updates.

As usual, thanks for reading, and I hope everyone’s 2024 is off to a good start.