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Tag: Pagerduty

  • Cathie Wood Goes Bargain Hunting: 3 Stocks She Just Bought

    Cathie Wood Goes Bargain Hunting: 3 Stocks She Just Bought

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    These are challenging times for Cathie Wood’s style of investing. The co-founder, CEO, and investor at Ark Invest finds her family of aggressive growth exchange-traded funds losing to the market for the third time in four years in 2024. Can she get back on track? She is certainly not standing still.

    Ark Invest made plenty of moves on Tuesday, adding to nine of her existing positions. Roku (NASDAQ: ROKU), Blade Air Mobility (NASDAQ: BLDE), and PagerDuty (NYSE: PD) are some of the names on that shopping list. Let’s take a closer look.

    1. Roku

    It’s not just Roku’s 81.6 million households that are binge viewing on Roku. Wood has added to her position for four consecutive trading days. Is “binge investing” a thing? Ark Invest now owns more than 9% of Roku’s total shares outstanding.

    Like many of the stocks that propelled Wood’s funds to market-thumping returns in 2000 and then again in 2023, Roku was a rock star last year. Shares of the streaming video platform more than doubled. This year has been anything but a welcome rerun. Roku has tumbled 40% in 2024, a laggard that’s buffering in an otherwise buoyant market.

    Someone curled on a couch while channel surfing.

    Image source: Getty Images.

    Roku is still growing. The number of households leaning on Roku’s operating system to fuel their TV streaming has risen 14% over the past year. Engagement is even better, as the hours streamed in its latest quarter soared 23% in its latest quarter.

    There are a couple of things holding Roku back. After a brief profitable run, Roku has now rattled nine consecutive quarterly deficits. It has come through with three straight quarters of positive free cash flow — and nine-figure free cash flow, at that — but investors will applaud the moment that Roku returns to actual profitability.

    Another thing holding Roku back is the fear that Walmart entering this space after announcing plans to acquire a small Roku rival could prove disruptive. This isn’t ideal, but it doesn’t seem like a game changer. Regulators have yet to approve the deal, and even if it does clear antitrust hurdles it’s not as if Roku isn’t ready. It’s been battling some of the country’s most valuable consumer and consumer tech companies for years. It’s more than holding its own.

    Average revenue per user has also been sluggish, but Roku could be turning that corner. It has experienced just one sequential decline in the last four quarters on that front. With streaming hours outpacing active user growth it’s just a matter of time before advertisers spend more of their money where viewers are spending more of their time.

    2. Blade Air Mobility

    Compared to Roku’s 40% year-to-date plunge, Blade Air Mobility’s 9% dip in 2024 is a small air pocket of turbulence. Blade Air provides on-demand helicopter transport services, primarily to get well-to-do passengers from airports to city centers in densely populated markets. Getting from JFK to the heart of Manhattan in just five minutes obviously has its appeal if you can afford the convenience. Blade also works with hospitals and other medical partners for the timely transport of organs.

    Revenue rose 14% to $51.5 million in its latest quarter, and the top-line jump would’ve been 22% if you back out the BladeOne scheduled jet service between New York and South Florida that it discontinued last year. Margins are improving, but it’s still a couple of years away from profitability.

    Growth has slowed from the torrid pace in 2021 and 2022 when revenue more than doubled in back-to-back years. There are a few publicly traded players in this high-end, short-flight air transport niche, but Blade stands out as an early player. It’s investing in high-tech and carbon-neutral electric vertical aircraft to keep up with some of the younger players, but the market for short flights will be a long battle.

    3. PagerDuty

    PagerDuty is down just 5% this year, but it’s been a frequent purchase for Ark Invest lately. Wood has added shares of the cloud-based provider of enterprise analytics and uptime monitoring every single trading day in June.

    PagerDuty’s slowing growth is a concern. It’s been consistently decelerating for nearly two years, going from 34% top-line growth to just 8% in its latest financial update.

    • Q2 2023: 34%

    • Q3 2023: 31%

    • Q4 2023: 29%

    • Q1 2024: 21%

    • Q2 2024: 19%

    • Q3 2024: 15%

    • Q4 2024: 10%

    • Q1 2025: 8%

    It’s not just Wood who’s taking a shine to PagerDuty this month. Craig-Hallum analyst Chad Bennett assumed coverage of the stock two weeks ago, lifting the firm’s rating from hold to buy. He also bumped the stock’s price target from $21 to $30, translating into 37% of potential upside from where it’s at now. With top-line growth expected to accelerate later this year and PagerDuty posting double-digit percentage beats on the bottom line over the past year, it could be the right call.

    Should you invest $1,000 in Roku right now?

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    Rick Munarriz has positions in Roku. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends PagerDuty, Roku, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

    Cathie Wood Goes Bargain Hunting: 3 Stocks She Just Bought was originally published by The Motley Fool

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  • Tech CEO Apologizes After ‘Tone Deaf’ Layoff Email Quoting MLK Jr.

    Tech CEO Apologizes After ‘Tone Deaf’ Layoff Email Quoting MLK Jr.

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    Informing employees about mass layoffs is most likely not an easy task for CEOs and company heads, but doing so in a tone-deaf way — and then being blasted on the internet for doing so — is probably the least ideal way to do it.


    Getty Images

    PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada

    Cloud computing company PagerDuty is making headlines after CEO Jennifer Tejada sent an internal memo to employees announcing that the company would be laying off 7% of its total global workforce (about 66 employees) while quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and announcing promotions in higher leadership.

    “After considering a range of approaches for strengthening the company as we move forward, we are further refining our operating model as we work to increase our capacity while improving our cost structure, focusing our efforts, and improving our return on investments,” Tejada wrote to employees. “It is my expectation that we show all of our colleagues the grace, respect, and dignity they have earned. As someone who has worked in this industry for decades, I have experienced this before and it is never easy, and I also know from experience that while we may not work together in the short term, our relationships and this community live beyond our tenure at PagerDuty.”

    Related: Sweetgreen CEO Apologizes to Staff After Fatphobic Comments

    Then, just sentences later, the CEO announced that Jeremy Kmet, SVP of North America Sales at the company, would be promoted to Senior Vice President of Global Field Operations beginning on February 1.

    And then came the kicker:

    “I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,’” Tejada wrote. “PagerDuty is a leader that stands behind its customers, its values, and our vision — for an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust.”

    The quote is from a sermon the activist gave in the 1950s before immortalizing it in “The Measure of a Man” in 1959.

    Naturally, once the email started making its rounds on the Internet, people were not pleased with her choice of words.

    Tejada’s email said those who were let go would receive 11 weeks of severance with the possibility of additional severance based on the individual employee’s tenure at the company. Axed employees will also be given “a minimum” of three to four months of extended healthcare coverage for themselves and any claimed dependents.

    The notice cited the shifting “macro environment,” inflation, and the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates as a reason for uncertainty in the market, and among PagerDuty’s customers’ (businesses), hesitation toward using the service, thus stalling growth for the company.

    Related: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Addresses Layoffs in Town Hall Meeting

    Three days after her initial email, Tejada apologized to employees in an email that PagerDuty made public on its website. The note came after a company-wide town hall.

    “This has been a difficult week for our company,” she said. “There are a number of things I would do differently if I could. The quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive. I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.”

    PagerDuty did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.

    In Q4 2022, PagerDuty reported $78.5 million in revenue (up 34% year over year), bringing overall revenue in fiscal 2022 to $281.4 million, a 31.8% year-over-year increase from 2021.

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    Emily Rella

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