It's been a massive quarter for Spaceship-kind, with the addition of two new portfolios, a simplified pricing structure, and some changes to the Spaceship Voyager portfolios.
Let's take a look back.
We launched two new Spaceship Voyager portfolios
We introduced two new Spaceship Voyager portfolios, increasing your options to five.
The Spaceship Galaxy Portfolio has a medium risk/return profile, with an asset allocation that balances lower-risk investments such as bonds and cash (60%) with growth investments (40%) that meet our "Where the World is Going" criteria. So, you'll find stocks such as Airbnb, Shopify, Tesla, Nike, and Amazon sitting alongside bond and cash ETFs.
The Spaceship Explorer Portfolio has a low-to-medium risk/return profile, with an asset allocation focused on lower-risk investments such as bonds and cash (80%), with some strategic exposure to global and Australian companies for growth (20%).
And you’ll pay the same monthly fee whether you have one, two, or all five portfolios.
We simplified our pricing
We're excited to see so many Spaceship Voyager customers expanding their investments.
And now you can 'power up' with US Investing — meaning if you've already paid the Spaceship Voyager monthly fee in the last month, you won't need to pay the US Investing monthly fee for that month. We want to make sure you get the most out of your investment with us.
We bought some stocks
Bought: Birkenstock
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio
Cast your imagination back to 1774. A man called Johann Adam Birkenstock is entered into his church archives as a "shoe maker and subject."
Now fast forward to more modern times: a scene in last year's Barbie movie, to be specific. Barbie chooses between a pair of heels and a pair of pink Birkenstocks, and firmly cements the German-made shoe as a fashion must-have, albeit 250 years in the making.
Despite being 250 years old, Birkenstock reported 23% revenue growth in the last quarter. This growth has been driven by their expansion into Asia and development of closed-toe silhouettes (shoes and non-sandals), which now account for more than 25% of revenue. This significant brand extension broadens their market to new potential buyers, leads to higher average prices and reduces their reliance on summer sandal sales.
We believe the company has shown impressive financial growth over the last decade, with revenues growing significantly each year. We feel this is in part due its exclusivity (Birkenstock controls supply to increase demand) and in part due its loyal customers (the average US customer owns 3.6 pairs of Birks, as they're affectionately known).
We believe investors will begin to value the company more like a high-end brand, even a healthcare company, rather than purely a “shoe” stock. This combination of legacy and growth are the major reasons why we like Birkenstock. With the company planning to double its production capacity in the next few years, which will support growth, we believe Birkenstock is an important opportunity for us.
Bought: Datadog
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio
Datadog is an 'observability' platform, which means it offers cloud-based monitoring and security for developers, IT operations teams and business users.
We see massive opportunity for Datadog as it still has only penetrated around 5% of the market. According to Datadog, approximately 40% of the customer base are on three of Datadog's key pillar services: infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, and log management. Customers adopting all three pillars generally spend 10x more, indicating growth potential in expanding pillar adoption. Additionally, there is the opportunity to move from observability of software assets to securing and automatically fixing issues using artificial intelligence. Datadog's long-term vision is to provide such a compelling product and value proposition that it would be "irrational" to not use it.
With the cloud market expected to grow 20% annually with increased operational complexity driving further observability and security demand, we believe there's plenty of growth potential.
Bought: Grab
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio and Spaceship Earth Portfolio
Grab is a ride-share and food delivery business operating out of Singapore.
We like Grab as it has high market share with more than 38 million monthly transacting users in Southeast Asia in mobility and delivery, which are long-term structural trends (according to our Where the World is Going methodology) supported by growth in emerging markets.
It also plays in financial services and advertising, which are in the early stages of monetisation.
The company has shown that it can cut losses and still keep its dominant position.
We sold some stocks
Sold: Alibaba
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio and Spaceship Earth Portfolio
We have held Alibaba since the inception of each portfolio. However, the Chinese government's antitrust investigation into the company has had more severe consequences than expected, impacting revenue and Alibaba's culture of innovation. We feel the company has become risk averse while facing increased competition from Pinduoduo (owner of Temu) in e-commerce and challenges in cloud computing, with businesses prioritising cloud partnerships with state-owned enterprises over Alibaba.
We believe there are growth opportunities elsewhere at this time.
Sold: Twilio
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio and Spaceship Earth Portfolio
We initially bought Twilio because of the perceived synergy between Twilio's messaging services and Segment's customer data platform (after Segment acquired Twilio in 2020). But as can be the case, perception isn't reality.
Twilio has struggled with several changes in sales leadership, workforce restructures, and a loss of customers, and while they've brought on new leadership, we feel that removing Twilio from our portfolios is the right decision as the initial thesis has not played out.
Sold: Bumble
In the Spaceship Universe Portfolio and Spaceship Earth Portfolio
Since we bought Bumble, the founder has stepped down. The new CEO, who hails from Salesforce, has commenced a reorganisation of the management team that has seen execs from enterprise software businesses join the dating and relationship platform. We feel this is a concern given Bumble is not in the enterprise software business, and so we have made the decision to exit out of our position in Bumble at this time.
Spaceship Origin Portfolio
For customers in the Spaceship Origin Portfolio, things are a little different.
The Spaceship Origin Portfolio is made up of around 100 of some of the largest ASX-listed companies by market capitalisation, and around 100 of some of the largest global companies by market capitalisation.
If a company moves in or out of the Spaceship Origin Portfolio, it will generally be because its market capitalisation has changed, not because we have decided to buy or sell it.
One or more of the Spaceship Voyager portfolios invest in Alibaba, Birkenstock, Datadog, and Grab at the time of writing. Please refer to the Spaceship app or our website for more information on what each portfolio invests in.
Important! We’re sharing with you our thoughts on the companies in which Spaceship Voyager invests for your informational purposes only. We think it’s important (and interesting!) to let you know what’s happening with Spaceship Voyager’s investments. However, we are not making recommendations to buy or sell holdings in a specific company. Past performance isn’t a reliable indicator or guarantee of future performance.
