The second quarter saw a continuation of the broad-based market volatility experienced in the first quarter due to macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns (i.e. inflation, interest rates, recession and the Ukraine/Russia conflict). The confluence of these dynamics resulted in an unusual rotation into commodity exposed securities and selling of what are usually more defensive, higher quality businesses. The magnitude of the volatility for our portfolio is surprising given the durability of our businesses, their strong long-term fundamental trajectory and limited exposure to the aforementioned concerns. To illustrate the extent of the selling pressure, several market leading franchises are trading below the March 2020 market collapse and in some cases, at the lowest valuations since the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.
We took this volatility as an opportunity to diversify further and buy a couple of great assets that were previously outside of our price range. While the past is no guarantee of the future, the periods subsequent to indiscriminate market volatility such as this have generated excellent investment returns for long-term investors focused on companies with strong fundamentals (e.g. from the Great Financial Crisis market lows to today, MSFT, AAPL, GOOGL and AMZN stock prices have gone up approximately +1,680%, +4,070%, +1,290% and +5,700%, respectively – excluding dividends). To that end, our strategy is unchanged and we remain fully invested in healthy, market leading companies that grew over +20% on a weighted-average basis vs the same period in 1Q2021 (impressive considering the amount of pent-up demand and stimulus spending that occurred in 1Q2021). Below are a few recent highlights from our research that speak to the robust tailwinds benefiting our portfolio companies – in stark contrast to the recent stock performance and prevailing macroeconomic narratives:
- Microsoft Earnings Call (4/26/2022)
- Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer
- “As we look toward FY23, our track record of delivering high value to our customers across many diverse and durable growth markets, gives us confidence that we will drive continued, healthy double-digit revenue and operating income growth”
- Question from Keith Weiss, Morgan Stanley Analyst:
- “I think the question that most investors are going to have is where do you garner the confidence and the durability of this growth, given how volatile this macro-backdrop is? Is it conversations you’re having with customers? Is that what you see in the backlog? Maybe if you give us some kind of insight into what gives you guys the confidence to put out that guide, to put out those healthy comments for FY23, what are you seeing that could really help give us and give investors a little bit more confidence in the durability of this growth in this environment?”
- Response from Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer
- “in the conversations we are having with our customers, the interesting thing I find from perhaps even past challenges, whether macro or micro, is, no, I don’t hear of businesses looking to their IT budgets or digital transformation projects as the place for cuts. If anything, some of these projects are the way they are going to accelerate their transformation, or for that matter, automation, for example. I have not seen this level of demand for automation technology to improve productivity, because in an inflationary environment, the only deflationary force is software…
- Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer
At the end of the day, though, I mean, none of us here are trying to forecast macro. So all we think of is the TAMs that we are competing in are large. As a percentage of GDP, tech spend is, on a secular basis by the end of the decade, going to double. We just want to keep driving usage, driving share, and be competitive. So that’s kind of how we view what we are doing and that’s where our confidence comes from in terms of our outlays, whether it’s OpEx or CapEx”
- Salesforce Earnings Call (5/31/2022)
- Marc Benioff, Chief Executive Officer
- “We had a great quarter. We’re carefully watching the economic data. I know all of you are doing that as well. And so far, we’re just not seeing any material impact on the broader economic world that all of you are in. Our demand environment, the demand is very strong. And if you look over the last 23 years, Salesforce has proven to be incredibly resilient based on this incredible business model we have. And incredible technology model that we have. We’ve been through all kinds of dot com crashes and recessions, and financial crises, and global pandemics, and all of you have watched us go through every possible storm, but we continue to weather these storms through the power and strength of our model”
- Amy Weaver, Chief Financial Officer
- “we are now guiding to fiscal ’23 revenue of $31.7 billion to $31.8 billion or approximately 20% growth year-over-year…
- “I am very pleased to announce that we are raising our fiscal ’23 non-GAAP operating margin guidance by 40 basis points to 20.4%”
- “we remain well on our way to drive another year of record cash flow generation… resulting in free cash flow growth of approximately 25% to 27% for the fiscal year.”
- Marc Benioff, Chief Executive Officer
- Morgan Stanley 2Q2022 CIO Survey (6/24/2022)
- “CIOs’ expectations for 2022 IT budget growth came in at 4.0% in our 2Q22 CIO survey, down 20 bps from the 4.2% reported last quarter, and down 10 bps from the 4.1% growth cited by CIOs for their 2021 growth (down from 4.3% last quarter). While growth expectations are trending lower, they remain largely inline with the 10-year pre-Covid average of 4.1% growth in IT spending”
- “Software is still expected to be the fastest growing sector in our survey in 2022 (4.1% in 2022 vs. 4.6% in 2021)”
- J.P. Morgan 2Q2022 Survey of 142 CIOs responsible for $114Bn of IT spend (6/22/2022)
- “In normal times, CIOs have set their IT budgets to grow 3-4% when US CPI ran at 1-2% (2016-2019). Currently, CIOs see 5.3% IT budget growth in CY22 and 5.7% in CY23, not even remotely conveying the same level of concern as during our pandemic period survey, when IT budgets were set to contract 4.8%”
- “Currently only 22% of IT budgets are being spent on public cloud, but CIOs see this rising to 42% in five years, representing a CAGR of 14-18% for public cloud spending… This profound global re-architecting creates durable growth runway on a massive scale, fueling an ongoing wave of new software disruptors”
- “The best-performing companies in our survey across multiple categories include Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google, Snowflake, and Salesforce. Honorable mentions include ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, Atlassian, Oracle, SAP, Pure Storage, and UiPath”
As always, our Partnership maintains a liquid, diversified portfolio with a conservative balance sheet and our long-term investment strategy is unchanged. Our portfolio companies are dominant in their respective growing industries, have strong cash flows (weighted average operating cash flow margin ~40%), and have the potential to accumulate balance sheet cash of nearly 30% of the total company value at current valuations in 4.5 years (resulting in a double digit cash flow yield). We remain willing and able to pivot should the facts around the long-term trajectory of our investments change. However, given the strength of these business models and structural tailwinds (as supported by the highlights above), it is my view that the market is significantly mispricing our assets. My personal family balance sheet is fully invested in our Partnership and am excited about our long-term profit potential. Thank you for your trust and please feel free to reach out anytime.
Your partner and fiduciary,
Faris Jafar, Chief Executive Officer
Phone: (734) 678-8562