Paysafe Was Too Risky Before Its Decline, but for $8 It’s Worth It

 Paysafe is a 20 year old company, but they just had their IPO.  They are a payment processor for many online services including xBox Live and Epic Games.  Shares have fallen since their IPO, but $8 seems like the bottom. 

Walker and Dunlap

 The Fool looks at an established small cap stock that has ambitious growth plans.  They own shares.  From the article:

They, at the end of 2020, announced their 2025 goals. These sound pretty ambitious at first. They want to grow to $60 billion in origination volume, they're at $35 right now. They want $160 billion in their servicing portfolio, they're at about $112 right now. They want to grow their property sales volume to $25 billion, that's four times the current level. Pretty ambitious growth objectives.

In that investment banking capability, they ended 2020 with $2 billion of assets under management for clients. They wanted to get to $10 billion by 2025. They've hit $16 billion already through an acquisition they just made. They've already hit that part of their 2025 goals. This is still a pretty small company, just under a $3.6 billion market cap, I think this could be a future large-cap company.

SOFI May Not Be on Sale Much Longer

 The Fool looks at the growth catalysts for SoFi and notes that it trades at a PE under 13. 

SoFi: Why Did I Back Up the Truck

 Interesting SA article on SoFi and why the author is all in on the company.  Some of the commenters think that although the company will be successful long term, there is too much competition for the company to sustain its growth. 

Cyxtera Technologies

 Cyxtera Technologies just went public via a SPAC.  The Fool thinks that they have a lot of potential with their asset light model of data center leasing.  They also own shares. 

On Outset Medical

 The Fool owns shares of Outset Medical, a company that just went public last year.  They combine several kidney dialysis machines into one, which saves a tremendous amount of money.  The device is FDA approved.  The company is not profitable yet. 

On Elastic

 As noted here, Elastic is a search company, but they power some of the world's top websites.  

"Elastic powers Uber's ride-hailing app, helping the company pair drivers with riders in close proximity. And Elastic powers the search engine behind Shopify's help documentation, enabling merchants to quickly find the appropriate information."

"According to DB Engines, Elastic is the most popular enterprise search engine on the market, outranking second-place Splunk by a wide margin."

The company just reported EPS of .04 as opposed to an expected .11 EPS loss.  The Fools owns shares.   

On Farfetch

 From Yahoo Finance.  The Fool owns shares. 

Insider Buying at Bryant Riley

 From InsiderArbitrage:

 

Shares of B. Riley Financial were acquired by 3 insiders:

• Chairman and Co-CEO Bryant R. Riley acquired 150,000 shares, paying $60.90 per share for a total amount of $9.14 million. Mr. Riley increased his stake by 2.97% to 5,198,633 shares with this purchase.
• Director Randall E. Paulson acquired 10,000 shares, paying $60.82 per share for a total amount of $608,220. Mr. Paulson increased his stake by 11.18% to 99,417 shares with this purchase.
• CEO B. Riley Securities, Inc. Andrew Moore acquired 5,000 shares, paying $63.70 per share for a total amount of $318,500. Mr. Moore increased his stake by 2.22% to 229,758 shares with this purchase.

B. Riley is a financial services firm that kept showing up on my radar multiple times over the years either because it was acquiring public companies, was buying back its own stock or because multiple insiders were buying the stock. I started digging into the company and its myriad lines of businesses and the more I looked into it, the more I liked what I saw.

The company was founded in 1997 as a boutique research firm focused on small-cap stocks. The company went public in 2014 by merging with the publicly traded financial advisory firm Great American Group. The stock has appreciated 232% since that merger was consummated on June 18, 2014. This compares with a gain of 32% in the Russell 2000 index over the same period.

The company provides investment banking services, wealth management services (over $10 billion in assets under management), appraisals, specialty financial advisory services and retail liquidation services in addition to owning certain companies outright.

Their advisory services businesses combined with their recent penchant to acquire brands or companies outright makes me think of B. Riley as a baby Berkshire Hathaway. The siren call of discovering the next Berkshire Hathaway or the next Warren Buffett has lead many investors astray and the investment landscape is littered with the ghosts of Eddie Lampert, Sardar Biglari, Prem Watsa, etc. That said, the more I looked into B. Riley, the more intrigued I was by the company. While the stock has appreciated handsomely from its March lows, the enterprise value of the company is just $752.27 million (market cap of $684.17 million, plus $55.6 million of preferred shares and $12.5 million of net debt) and I expect years of growth from the company as it navigates a potentially challenging macroeconomic landscape

 

Boston Omaha: The One Small Cap I Can't Get Enought Of

 One Fool just loves Boston Omaha.  They are small now, but are building a large conglomerate from the ground up.