We recently published a list of Billionaire David Abrams’ 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Cantaloupe, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTLP) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential.
David Abrams founded Abrams Capital Management in 1999. Before forming the Boston-based investment firm, Abrams worked at Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group for 10 years. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA degree in History, where he also served on the Board of Advisors of the College of Arts and Sciences. Abrams didn’t have a finance background when he got his first job in New York in the early 1980s. He learned all about investing under Seth Klarman before setting out independently after a decade. He is a value investor, and in the ~12 years of his fund, he has achieved an annualized return of around 20%. His firm is like a one-man shop, which employs a small staff. Abrams Capital has 9 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $10.05 billion, as reported in the firm’s Form ADV dated 13 January 2025. The last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $6.22 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 98.7%.
Abrams is known for maintaining a low public profile, but in a conversation on Columbia Business School’s ‘Value Investing with Legends’ Podcast series, he discussed the surface of his foundational principles when it comes to his investment philosophy. He starts by looking at the risks first and foremost, without any consideration of prospective gains. This is a reminder that the future remains unpredictable, which Abrams puts in the following words:
“When you look back, there’s one path that happened, but that doesn’t mean that going forward there’s only one path. In the future, there’s multiple paths.”
Abrams’ portfolio reflects a balanced approach with exposure to growth sectors like Industrials and Consumer Cyclical, while also maintaining moderate allocations in established industries such as Communication Services. He also believes that declining industries can present stability because they attract limited new entrants. This also implies that high-growth sectors are, on the contrary, characterized by intense competition, which necessitates a more detailed analysis of potential competitive threats. Here’s what Abrams had to say about this:
“If you have a shrinking industry and it’s dying, it’s like, people are not dying to get into that.”
Abrams serves as a director of several private companies. He is currently on the board of MITMCO, which manages the MIT endowment. Previously, he was a trustee of Berklee College of Music for 15 years, where he chaired the investment committee. He was also the trustee of Milton Academy.
Our Methodology
To compile the list of billionaire David Abrams’ 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Abrams Capital Management from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked each stock’s upside potential from CNN and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Abrams Capital Management’s stake in each stock as well as the broader hedge fund sentiment for it.
Note: All data was sourced on May 8.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A woman at a self-service kiosk using a software service to manage logistics.
Cantaloupe, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTLP)
Abrams Capital Management’s Stake: $68.28 million
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 19
Average Upside Potential as of May 8: 45.99%
Cantaloupe, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTLP) is a digital payments and software services company that provides technology solutions for the self-service commerce market. It offers integrated solutions for payment processing, logistics, and back-office management. It also offers professional network infrastructure, card processing, and customer/consumer services.
Cantaloupe’s subscription revenue reached $20.7 million in Q2 2025, which was up 14% year-over-year. This was fueled by the strength in micro markets, which is highlighted as the company’s fastest-growing segment. This expansion is also driven by the adoption of the company’s SEED software among both existing and new customers. This software is Cantaloupe’s platform that provides management tools for self-service commerce operations.
As the calendar year 2024 concluded, Cantaloupe reported having ~32,000 active customers and 1.3 million active devices within its ecosystem. This represented a year-over-year increase of 10% and 4%, respectively. The average revenue per unit for Q2 was $202, which was also up 12%. New customer wins in the vending sector, like EBS, further support the subscription segment’s growth.
Laughing Water Capital stated the following regarding Cantaloupe, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTLP) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Cantaloupe, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTLP) – Cantaloupe can most simply be thought of as our vending machine software and payments company, although the industry is evolving to more fully encompass “unattended retail,” including micro markets and smart stores. After many disappointing years, under new leadership the Company has reached an inflection point and is growing at a high teens level into a cash machine focused on stable end markets, while also growing internationally and into adjacent markets. With time I expect the market will appreciate that cash flow generated from software and payments with very little churn is valuable, and re-rate shares higher. It should be noted that while CTLP is in our top 5, it is a medium sized position.”
Overall, CTLP ranks 3rd on our list of billionaire David Abrams’ stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of CTLP as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CTLP but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.