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A Fool-ish Guess: Teased “Rare Recent IPO Buy Alert” from Tom Gardner

What's the latest Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick being teased?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, December 18, 2017

I usually get quite a few questions about teaser pitches from the Motley Fool, and this one is no different… but what does make it a bit different is the paucity of clues.

So we’re going to do some guessing this time out. Buckle your seatbelts!

The pitch is for Motley Fool Stock Advisor, their “flagship” newsletter that features picks from Fool founding brothers Tom and David Gardner in each issue, and it’s Tom’s pick that they’re dangling as bait for our subscription dollars. Here’s what they note in the pitch:

“Yesterday our CEO, Tom Gardner, unveiled his latest stock pick – and his confidence about this one is through the ROOF!

“In fact, he is so confident that he has invested money from his own pocket in the company!”

The Fool does that quite a bit — unlike some newsletter publishers, the editors and employees own stocks that they write about (though they do disclose it, which is good), and the Motley Fool itself also owns stocks in corporate portfolios. I’m not giving them a hard time, incidentally, I think newsletter writers should own stocks and shouldn’t have to choose between owning a stock that they like and writing about it… though there should certainly be trading restrictions that keep employees from trading the “pop” that any newsletter recommendation might have. (That’s the policy here at Stock Gumshoe — writers can own the stock that they write about, but must disclose that… and they cannot trade that stock for at least three days, which should be enough time for a little “pop” to deflate with our relatively small readership.)

But I digress… what’s the story this time? It’s a recent IPO, much like, they say, brother Dave’s recommendation of Match (MTCH) last year… here are the few clues we get:

“… this company only had their IPO 6 months ago….

“Just last month, this small (for now) company ended their “lock-up period.” And insiders are now able to sell shares in the open market.

“And while that can initially cause share prices to drop – we believe that temporary lull is about to end.

“And since this ‘IPO lock-up lull’ only happens once in a company’s life… this could be the lowest we ever see their stock!”

And one final clue, which might be the most useful one of all:

“Tom only unveiled this latest pick to Stock Advisor members yesterday! Which means the stock market was only open for 4 hours after it came out.”

So who is it? This is, sez the Thinkolator (with less certainty than we usually like), Appian (APPN).

Why? Well, it did go public a bit over six months ago… the shares did dip on the lockup expiration a bit, it seems… and, most compellingly, the stock is soaring today on the back of that recommendation to a few hundred thousand of Tom Gardner’s closest buds (Stock Advisor is the Fool’s least expensive letter, and has by far the largest circulation, at 268,000+ last time I saw their list data). Certainly enough to make a small cap stock like Appian go bonkers, and bonkers it did — a 5% jump at Noon yesterday, and a further 20%+ today.

Has there been other news, or other reason for this stock to jump? Perhaps, but I didn’t see it. They’ve gotten a little bit of additional purchasing by the largest (by far) institutional shareholder, Abdiel Capital Advisors, so that fund now owns more than half of the company… and I don’t know anything about them, but it’s a concentrated hedge fund that says it uses a “value” investing strategy. I haven’t checked to see whether they were also pre-IPO investors in Appian, but they have built at least half of their position since the IPO with a record of pretty aggressive buying over the past six months.

So that’s an odd part of the story that I’d want to understand a bit better — if the data in Yahoo Finance is accurate, then Abdiel over the past few months has bought more than half of the shares of this fairly small ($1+ billion market cap) company… which is decidedly unusual. And insiders did do additional selling once that lockup period expired, but not Abdiel, they kept buying… so the executives who should know the company best own hardly any shares at all, and the pre-IPO shareholders seem to have sold their shares hand over fist, but this hedge fund is a huge shareholder and buying more. That’s worth putting in some time to understand, I expect.

Appian is an interesting company, though I don’t understand the product particularly well — they offer a platform for easier software/app development for enterprise customers, essentially cutting down on the amount of coding required to develop custom apps for business processes, allowing for faster implementation.

The reason to buy Appian is the growth, as you might imagine, and it’s a subscription-service model, with extremely good customer retention and some encouraging signs that they can expand into new industries and keep growing (they were heavily reliant on financial services companies, and have now expanded aggressively into healthcare and pharmaceutical companies)… but they are, of course, priced for the future. They aren’t profitable and likely won’t be profitable in the next couple years, though the sales growth is strong and the price/sales ratio is not completely ludicrous. You can see the basics of their current financials here in their last quarterly presentation.

So… it’s an interesting one, I’d like to know what that hedge fund is up to with its controlling stake, and I’d want to research the company a bit more, but high growth in subscription revenue and strong customer retention and growth in new customers are all appealing, and software-as-a-service companies that can attract new customers and keep existing customers happy and spending more each year can get really rapid exponential growth once they reach an inflection point where the revenue comes in dramatically faster than they can spend it on R&D and salespeople. I don’t know where that point comes, and hadn’t heard of this stock before today, but it’s an appealing starting point… even if it’s a bit hard to take the stock seriously on the day that it instantly becomes 25% more expensive (if it’s any consolation, the stock is still below the all-time high in late September).

And perhaps one of you out there in Gumshoe-land knows a bit about our friend Appian… maybe you’ve researched them before, maybe you’ve used the product? Please do help make us all a little wiser by sharing your thoughts with a comment below. Thanks for reading!

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22 Comments
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gregoryhaag
Irregular
gregoryhaag
December 18, 2017 6:58 pm

Yes, they are teasing APPN.

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manningj
manningj
December 18, 2017 7:01 pm

Boy do I wish this came out one day earlier

Thanks for this, Travis. Gonna keep an eye on $APPN for sure.

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jgsumm709
December 18, 2017 7:38 pm

Yep, Manningj is right….APPN had a nice “pop” today….maybe because Tom sent out an email also recommending it today!!

lamorgan101
December 18, 2017 7:50 pm

keep your hands to yourself on this one. overvalued, overall earnings quality is pretty low, growth of earnings and cash flow is low, financial health doesn’t seem like I’d take out an insurance policy (invest) on it soon. & with the hedge fund pouncing on it like a drunken submariner at his/her first port of call run to the red light district after 3 months under the polar ice cap I think I’ll wait for the thaw.

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jo
Guest
jo
December 19, 2017 12:21 am
Reply to  lamorgan101

you have such a way with words…. : )

Hapsam
Guest
Hapsam
December 18, 2017 8:42 pm

Microsoft bought a small company a year or two ago named Xamarin that I believe offers a similar product. Xamarin still operates under its own name, but it is now part of the Microsoft Enterprise group. I would guess this is a growing market at mobile apps seem to be the solution for all sorts of commercial issues.

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mongoose0614
mongoose0614
December 18, 2017 10:28 pm
Reply to  Hapsam

If you own 50% you are in it for the long haul. They can’t liquidate their position strategically at all with that much. THey are positioned for a buyout.

goingloco
goingloco
December 18, 2017 11:57 pm
Reply to  mongoose0614

Exactly. That would be the explanation I would go for. If they own more than 50% they can control the negotiations for a buyout (actually takeover would be a better word) and guarantee control to the buyer. Cisco is one big buyer of application development software: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/corporate-strategy-office/acquisitions/acquisitions-list-years.html

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andrea
Guest
andrea
December 19, 2017 7:01 am
Reply to  mongoose0614

i agree , they are waiting for microsoft or the like to take over, However this may be a cheap way to get into MSFT

kblyons46
kblyons46
December 18, 2017 8:48 pm

i have a few reactions; first, this is fundamentally a very strong and interesting company. True, they are not yet profitable, but I’m impressed with what they’ve been able to do (I’m a computer scientist, by the way). They could, and I emphasize ‘could,’ wind up really going places. There’s a good bit of competition in the area, but they are off to a very hot start.
Now, having said that, I’m rather disappointed that Fool made the highly misleading statement that the recommendation was just released in Stock Advisor Dec 15. That’s true, literally, but it leaves out the fact that the ORIGINALLY made the recommendation in three other services in August and September. This is NOT a new recommendation. So there were lots of folks in the Fools ecosystem watching the stock before Friday. That probably feeds into the pop that occurred today. (full disclosure; I own a small position.)

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senior111
senior111
December 19, 2017 2:52 am

I subscribe to Stock Advisor and found the service quite good (ie recommendations are ok but no home runs. Ignored their rec on NYT when it was 19, but bought KMI and still a bit under the water.)
I had advanced notice, but couldn’t really appreciate what APPN offers in their Low-code” product.

I was in the software field for many years ago, and found that any software tool that offers rapid development of report and user interface layouts would be very useful. I suspect “low-code” mean the structure of a function is mostly needing only specific user requirements to complete it. Now that would be useful.

I am waiting for enthusiasm to go down a bit before I buy.

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JayJayUK
Member
JayJayUK
December 19, 2017 4:35 am

The Fool seems to be getting a bit carried away – maybe euphoric? -in this late bear market. I’m with the cautious on this tip.

rodger27
Irregular
December 19, 2017 10:02 am

I have had very good luck with Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor. Dave Garner has a better track record then his brother, Tom, but both are easily beating the S&P. Tom Garner says that the retenion rate for APPN customers is between 105 to 110% ( i.e.,customers are not only resubscribing but adding additional services). The Stock Advisor is famous for picking companies that appear to be overpriced but continue to grow for the next 5-10 years.

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Sam Godambe
Member
Sam Godambe
December 19, 2017 12:32 pm
Reply to  rodger27

I totally agree with you. I put APPN on my list but it was too late, because it gaped up on the same day. Usually, I noticed that if you buy it takes a long time to give the results and one has to have patient.
Anyway, it is on my buy list and I will wait for a pullback.

Lee Henderson
Member
Lee Henderson
December 23, 2017 3:34 pm

Lots of competition in the “low code” space from Oracle down to a dozen small companies

rosalindr
Member
January 3, 2018 12:38 am
Reply to  Lee Henderson

Many years ago I worked with a product called Crystal Reports. It was a report writer for non-programmers, which was later bought out by Seagate. Then Seagate was later bought by SAP.

I wrote a training guide on Crystal in 2002 for Howard Hammerman and updated it in 2008. It’s still listed for sale on his website. I’m not sure what’s different or better about the new software Motley Fool is touting, but like you said “low code” has been around for a long, long time.

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SoGiAm
January 3, 2018 1:02 am
Reply to  rosalindr

$APPN 🙂 #CrystalReports, Impressive work #RosalindR! 🙂
Happy New Year ALL! 😉
#BestIn18&Beyond… : -)

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Bob Moe
Guest
Bob Moe
January 15, 2018 7:46 pm
Reply to  rosalindr

Seagate (STX) must’ve “Unbought” themselves cause they are still a Stock. Just made a Killing off a MAR Call ($5 1.82. +$10) in a Week. lol

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Dennis Cator
Guest
Dennis Cator
January 28, 2020 6:57 pm
Reply to  rosalindr

What did Seagate or SAP do with the product. Is the difference in the Marketing?

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saint stephen
December 28, 2017 11:27 am

I read the Motley fool Advisor awhile back. I lost money in about eight of their picks and quit reading it.

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SoGiAm
January 3, 2018 1:18 am

$DXC – Wild ride https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=dxc #TIDAL 😉
Jan-02-18 07:38AM Zacks.com highlights: Estee Lauder, DXC Technology, Michael Kors Holdings, Stifel Financial and City Holding Zacks
Dec-28-17 08:26AM FTC Cuts Short HSR Waiting Period for DXC’s Spin-Merger Deal Zacks
Dec-27-17 08:40AM DXC Technology Receives Early Termination of Hart-Scott-Rodino Waiting Period in Connection with Vencore and Keypoint Acquisitions, USPS Merger-Spin-off Business Wire
Dec-26-17 02:45PM Meg Whitman to step down from DXC Technology board American City Business Journals
01:00PM Here are the most-read FedBiz stories of 2017 American City Business Journals

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wowflower
January 13, 2018 7:07 am

Motley Fool (their words) “pick of the 2018 year” is Appian.

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