TOP 3 PORTFOLIO ADDITIONS (9/19)
- RTGW
- Sep 19, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2023
To kick off our launch, we'll be adding our first three stocks to our site portfolio. These are stocks that we believe have good potential or stocks that have already proved themselves to be valuable assets in our own personal portfolios.
TRIMBLE INCORPORATED (TRMB)
Starting off, we have Trimble, ticker TRMB. Trimble Incorporated—formerly Trimble Navigation up until 2016—is a company that's solidified itself as a mainstay in the world of technology as well as the world of agriculture, infrastructure, transportation, and many others. Trimble started as a company dedicated to creating global positioning systems (GPS), but come the year 2000, that would become just a portion of their company's services. They've since moved on to more widescale projects, ranging from agricultural automation to their heavy contributions in the field of building information modeling (BIM); this was all the while still making advancements in GPS, including but not limited to utilizing their systems to map shuttle debris in 2001 and for assessing damage after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Since then, the company has expanded further into labor automation and structural data collection, i.e., lidar and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems).
Trimble has been on a tear over the last year, up over 100% since August of 2020, and as of now, the company looks like it still has a lot more room to grow in the long term. Within just the last three months, the company has made vast improvements in its lidar and RTX systems, making collecting and applying geospatial information quicker and easier. The company's vast strides in the industry certainly reflect in their earnings, having consistently beat analyst estimations over the last 8 quarters—October 2019 to today. As such, the company's revenue in the last 8 quarters has also increased quite nicely, going from $874 million to $945 million. With this performance, we believe it's very likely that Trimble will continue to be a valuable asset to the world for years to come, and therefore a good long-term hold.
ROBLOX (RBLX)
Our second stock is ROBLOX, ticker RBLX. ROBLOX is a gaming platform, online community, and video game development software all in one. They're currently one of the largest driving forces and examples of a concept more recently known as "the metaverse," an idea that involves connected virtual environments and experiences that users can take part in with virtual identities. The company gives its players and developers the tools required to create said experiences on the platform, giving users the ability to make just about anything their imagination can come up with. The very nature of ROBLOX should have been appealing to anyone and everyone that plays video games—but there was just one issue. The lego-like visuals that the game came with upon release didn't catch the attention of many adults, meaning the player base mainly consisted of children. As the company has aged, they've pivoted to make their system more enjoyable for a broader demographic, and with great success, revealing that their userbase of players over age 13 grew 111% from Q1 of 2019 to Q1 of 2020. Player count is an important factor for the company as society continues to open back up during COVID, and to see this extra engagement from an older subset of players is fantastic news for the company's longevity.
The company's fundamentals are on the duller side in some ways, with their net loss in Q2 of 2021 being $140.1 million—$10 million higher than Q1. Despite this, the company's revenue for Q2 has increased 127% to $454.1 million. They also shared some very promising user-based metrics, revealing that since Q2 of 2020, they've had another 46% increase in average daily use from users over age 13 and a 29% increase in average daily users overall, the latter percentage equalling out to about 43.2 million extra players. With steadily growing player metrics across the board, we believe ROBLOX will continue to expand its horizons with newer tools and a wider variety of players, allowing it to flourish long after COVID.
LUMINAR TECHNOLOGIES (LAZR)
The third and final stock we'd like to talk about today is Luminar Technologies, ticker LAZR. Luminar Technologies is a company focused on perfecting automotive lidar hardware and software, aiming to make motor vehicle autopilot both safer and more effective for consumers. They are partnered with rather big names in the automotive industry, including Toyota and SAIC Motor. Additionally, as of June 24, 2021, Luminar will officially be working directly with Volvo to make their lidar technology standard come to the next generation of vehicles.
This is huge for Luminar as it guarantees the company a pretty major spot among the next generation of vehicles. Alongside this accomplishment, the company—as of August 12, 2021—boasts one hundred patents, "more than all other public lidar companies combined," according to the company's website. Although their Non-GAAP net loss for Q2 of 2021 was $27.7 million (up from $18.0 million for Q2 of 2020), Luminar's revenue has since increased by 84%, up to $6.3 million reported in Q2 of 2021. With electric vehicles and automation on the rise, we believe this company absolutely has room to run. When taking into account Luminar's growing number of reliable partnerships in a world in which automation and autopilot developments are booming, we strongly believe we'll see incredible gains in both the near and distant future.