Cathie Wood is back on the track. The co-founder CEO of the Ark Invest family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is rolling again with her aggressive style of disruptive growth stocks. Her largest ETF is up 44% in 2023, beating the market after back-to-back years of terrible returns. Is she ready to party like it's 2020 again?
Ark Invest went shopping on Tuesday, and we know what she's buying and selling since Ark Invest puts out daily transaction reports. Wood added to her existing stakes in Palantir Technologies (PLTR 3.73%), Pacific Biosciences of California (PACB 6.52%), and Global-e Online (GLBE 2.44%). Let's take a closer look.
1. Palantir Technologies
Shares of Palantir have more than doubled in 2023, one of this year's biggest gainers with a 165% ascent. It took a step back this week after posting financial results.
Revenue rose 13% to $533 million for the second quarter. It's the weakest year-over-year top-line growth for Palantir since going public through a direct listing in 2020. However, that wasn't the reason for the stock's pullback on Tuesday. Guidance three months ago -- in a more favorably received performance -- was calling for just $528 million to $532 million in revenue for the quarter.
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Palantir's bottom line was another story. After years of losses, it has now scored three consecutive quarters of reported profitability. However, the $0.05 a share in adjusted earnings merely met expectations. After back-to-back bottom-line beats, Palantir proved mortal. When your stock has more than doubled you can't afford to merely live up to the hype.
The software builder for the intelligence community has come a long way. It raised its revenue guidance for the full year. It also expected to continue posting positive earnings on a reported basis in the next two quarters. Its customer count has widened by 38% over the past year, and 8% sequentially. Revenue obviously didn't keep pace with that growth. New users to Palantir are largely small players. It's still a good sign for growth to eventually begin accelerating.
2. Pacific Biosciences of California
Pacific Biosciences of California -- or PacBio, for short -- is a leader in long-read gene sequencing. Its solutions cover a wide range of applications including human genomics, plant and animal sciences, infectious disease and microbiology, and oncology. The stock has surrendered 10% of its value over the past week, drifting lower after checking in with a financial update last week.
PacBio has been generating reasonable revenue for more than a decade. Revenue rose 34% to $47.6 million in its latest quarter, as instrument revenue nearly doubling was weighed down by a decline in the consumables business. It's still a couple of years away from reaching profitability, but it has a healthy cash balance to fund operations until it becomes cash-flow-positive.
3. Global-e Online
Wood was buying the dip of several stocks on Tuesday, and the last one I'll focus on today is Global-e. The provider of cross-border solutions for e-commerce retailers of all sizes fell 5% on Tuesday, but it was down as much as 12% earlier in the day after offering up its latest quarterly performance.
Revenue rose a better-than-expected 53% in this week's report. Global-e's loss was also narrower than analysts were projecting. It did raise its full-year guidance, but the mid-point of its revenue outlook for the year as well as the current quarter is below where the pros were perched.
Global-e is in the same boat as Palantir, a big winner in 2023 that in this case has nearly doubled in 2023. Generating stronger growth than many e-commerce stocks, it's easy to see Wood's attraction to Global-e. The post-earnings dip was apparently too good for for her to pass up this time.
