PaulWBryant

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PaulWBryant posted to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 1 hour ago

My thoughts on Elastic's Quarter

What's driving the sell off?

To me the headline is calculated billings. As with ZS, ESTC's growth here has slowed.

Jul 2018: 76%
Oct 2018: 73%
Jan 2019: 68%
Apr 2019: 57%
Jul 2019: 51%
Oct [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 5:46 PM

Re: ZScaler Earnings

Calculated billings:

Q2 FY18: up 49%
Q3 FY18: up 73%
Q4 FY18: up 72%
Q1 FY19: up 56%

Q2 FY19: up 74%
Q3 FY19: up 55%
Q4 FY19: up 32%
Q1 FY20: up 37%

That's a slow down, hard comps or not. [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 9:12 AM

Re: Bear's Portfolio through Nov 2019

Do you worry about diversification of your portfolios? It's like you own a SaaS sector fund - albeit one with some really great stocks, but what if this sector gets sick for more than a month next time - what if it gets sick for a year or [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 8:35 PM

Re: Showing their volatile side

2) Also, those SaaS companies that provide an easy implementation will fare better is there is an IT slowdown. For instance, solutions that can be quickly and painlessly onboarded (e.g. such as CRWD's or DDOG's) should be more insulated [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 4:58 PM

Re: Bear's Portfolio through Nov 2019

I am wondering how you discriminate between DDOG and CRWD. Both are in the take-off stage and both are very expensive. Why do you shed DDOG and add to CRWD? Is that just a nervous move?

DDOG is a lot more expensive than CRWD. [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 11:35 AM

Re: Bear's Portfolio through Nov 2019

For example, I feel more nervous about my 6th position, ZS, than my top position, AYX, even though ZS is just a 9% position and AYX is well over 20%.

As always, don't follow me by any means, but I took my own advice here and shed [more]

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PaulWBryant posted to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 9:12 AM

Bear's Portfolio through Nov 2019

My 2019 Portfolio Performance YTD as of

Jan +22.48%
Feb +33.46%
Mar +38.27%
Apr +46.86%
May +43.50%
Jun +58.27%
Aug2 +65.38%
Aug(31) +62.13%
Sep +35.64%
Oct +32.16%
Nov [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 10:41 AM

Re: NTNX Q1 - Another Solid Quarter!

mekong: +72% increase in Subscription revenue

That doesn't tell you much due to the corresponding (negative 47%) drop in non-sub software.

mekong: Total Revenue and Billings essentially flat, but that’s due to the [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 3:24 PM

Re: Encouraging CRWD trend

The share count has increased 3X year over year.

Jeb,

That is incorrect.

Please refer to this post: [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 1:42 PM

Re: Encouraging CRWD trend

I'm not meaning to imply that you don't look at everything else. What I'm saying is that you allow EV/S to dominate your decision in the sense of letting it overrule everything else. I hope what I'm saying is clear and [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 12:11 PM

Re: Encouraging CRWD trend

I never said I'd buy it at any price. I'm saying that I'd buy it at the price the market is giving it.

I just want to point out that if you won't buy it at any price, you're agreeing that valuation [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 9:05 AM

Re: Encouraging CRWD trend

Free Cash Flow Margin:

Fiscal 2017 -123%
Fiscal 2018 -80%
Fiscal 2019 -26%

Gross Profit Percent of Revenue

Fiscal 2017 36%
Fiscal 2018 54%
Fiscal 2019 65%
Last Q 71%

Dollar Based Net [more]

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PaulWBryant posted to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 3:41 PM

Encouraging CRWD trend

I know we don't often look at guidance since companies always sandbag, and therefore we can't expect to get accuracy from the outlook numbers. However, sometimes we can see trends.

Crowdstrike has only reported twice as a public [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Portfolio Management board. 10:24 AM

Re: To take profit or not

You will never hear a story about a little old lady who became a multi-millionaire because she repeated sold off shares of Coke over the years.

I cringe a little at examples like this. If the little old lady knew she was 99% allocated [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Portfolio Management board. 9:58 AM

Re: To take profit or not

Jozef,

My advice would be to trim when:

1) A position gets too large for comfort
2) something changes (the company growth starts to slow down, they have a sales problem, etc)
or
3) you see a better place for the money [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 8:16 AM

Re: Avalara AVLR

One thing I’m a bit weary about is their potential to really scale internationally.

I see this on the boards almost every day, so allow me to play the grammar police just once.

You're wary or leery [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 9:05 AM

Re: DataDog and Alteryx - relative valuation

This begs the question, should I be paying 2.38x more for DataDog than for Alteryx? What factors could make this valuation reasonable? I can think of a few things such as competitive position, size of market opportunity, strength of leadership, [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 3:01 PM

Re: A question for Dreamer, if he's still th

me: but you still allocate more to the ones you feel have the greatest potential for appreciation. And you have Datadog as a top 3 allocation.

Saul: Actually that's not my criteria. It's not the ones that have the greatest [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 10:52 AM

Re: A question for Dreamer, if he's still th

Saul,

I was actually thinking Andy's growth and value dichotomy was a false one. Of course you look for great growth companies, but you still allocate more to the ones you feel have the greatest potential for appreciation. And you [more]

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PaulWBryant replied to the Saul’s Investing Discussions board. 10:36 AM

Re: What makes it all worthwhile?

Glad to hear it's still worthwhile for you, Saul, because I treasure what we've built here. This board is a huge source of value. Still, often people seem to misunderstand the board. I've heard it said a time to many that 1) no one is [more]