FNArena’s Weekly Insights – May 24 2021
In this week’s Weekly Insights:
-Investing In Quality & Growth; A Journey
-Conviction Calls
-All-Weathers, EML Payments, Macquarie, And Risk
Investing In Quality & Growth; A Journey
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArena
Investing in Growth companies is something entirely different from trying to find true value among bombed out cyclicals, disrupted business models and misjudged disappointments.
Which is why my investment rule number one says: never ask your typical value investor for an opinion on a Growth stock.
You know the answers already. It’s either too expensive. Or it won’t last. Or the world has gone super-duper crazy.
But Growth stocks offer a lot more than the next investment fad or mini-market bubble. As one astute fund manager stated recently: find the right one, and you can keep them in your portfolio for the next decade, possibly longer. Along the way, fortunes are being made and lives are changing – literally.
New Zealand-based a2 Milk ((A2M)) achieved a secondary listing on the ASX in March 2015 at a price of 56c. Mid-last year the shares peaked near $20 for a return ex-dividends of no less than circa 3470%. What this means is that $1000 spent on the first day of trading would have appreciated to $3,470,000 in a little over five years.
What this also means is that investors could have bought those shares in any meaningful pull back and still have made a huge return on investment. One that literally could prove life-changing.
But those earlier mentioned value investors are correct too. It couldn’t last and it didn’t. a2 Milk shares are today languishing around $5.50 which translates into a depreciation of approximately -72%. In less than one year. That’s one big ouch!
And a2 Milk is far from the only one. Shares in artificial intelligence company Appen ((APX)) peaked below $45 in August last year. They are now changing hands at around $13.50, having recently rallied off a bottom not far above $10.
Credit-but-no-credit provider Afterpay ((APT)) still had the wind firmly in the sails in February with the shares surging well above $150. They are now struggling to hold above $90.
