5 Best Software Stocks to Buy According to Cathie Wood

2. Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 63    

Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU) is a California-based company that offers users access to streaming media content. It was founded in 2002 and is placed second on our list of 10 best software stocks to buy according to Cathie Wood. Roku stock has offered investors returns exceeding 219% in the past twelve months. ARK Investment holds close to 5 million shares in the company worth over $1.6 billion. These represent more than 3.2% of the investment portfolio of the hedge fund. ARK trimmed their stock in Roku by 8% in the past few months. 

Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU) posted earnings results for the first quarter of 2021 on May 6, reporting earnings per share of $0.54, beating market predictions by $0.67. The revenue for the first three months of 2021 was over $574 million. 

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, 63 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $3.7 billion in Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU), up from 60 in the preceding quarter worth $3.2 billion.

In its Q4 2020 investor letter, RGA Investment Advisors, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“For two years running, Roku has now been either the largest or second largest driver of performance in portfolios. When we purchased Roku, obviously we never expected such a phenomenal outcome, so quickly—these things can only be chalked up to luck. However, we do think luck is the residue of design and Roku had all the hallmarks ex ante as the kind of position that could do something wildly spectacular. One of the first signs in seeing Roku’s potential was the sharp contrast between our modeled expectations for the top line of the business and where the consensus expectations were. This was the Shopify setup all over again. By this time, we had added an additional tool to our analytical framework, and this helped further enforce our conviction that not only was it we who were right about where things should go, but also that the very existence of this gap could be a potent source of fuel behind the stock as the world came around to our expectation. Specifically, we had become increasingly comfortable building lifetime value analyses of companies, and notably, when we bought Roku, we were quite confident that with only modest annual increases in average revenue per user (ARPU), and a 5-year average customer lifespan, we were buying the company for its existing customer base and nothing more. In other words, the growth at Roku was entirely free at the prevailing prices we bought into.”