Cathie Wood may or may not be a fan of playground equipment, but there's no denying that she always has her eyes on slides. The Ark Invest founder, CEO, and stock picker has a habit of adding to her positions when they fall out of favor. She was in stride on the final trading day of last week.
Ark bought only three stocks on Friday, adding to her existing stakes in CrowdStrike Holdings(NASDAQ: CRWD), Oklo(NYSE: OKLO), and GitLab(NASDAQ: GTLB). CrowdStrike plummeted 11% after experiencing a debilitating outage. Oklo and GitLab inched marginally higher on Friday, but the stocks are down 18% and 15% respectively so far this year.
Will these three stocks bounce back? Let's take a closer look at Wood's three latest buys.
1. CrowdStrike Holdings
CrowdStrike became a household name on Friday, unfortunately. The cybersecurity specialist prefers to work behind the scenes, helping its growing client base ward off online threats. It proved to be its own enemy late last week, as a platform update caused a widespread outage.
The IT breakdown grounded flights for several airlines. It also made Friday challenging for banks, hospitals, and other businesses caught in the crossfire of the faulty update. CrowdStrike shares tumbled for the day, but it's still a winning investment for most of its shareholders. The stock has doubled over the past year, more than tripling over the past five years.
Image source: Getty Images.
The real test for CrowdStrike comes now. Its reputation took a big hit on Friday, but that probably won't be enough for the marketplace to turn its back on its Falcon line of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. It just has to make sure another IT outage doesn't happen anytime soon.
CrowdStrike finally turned profitable on a reported basis last year. It's only building on its bottom line so far this year. It has consistently cranked out "beat and raise" performances. The next few quarters will be critical to make sure clients aren't leaving CrowdStrike behind.
2. Oklo
Oklo is more than just a four-letter word to Wood. It's a fast fission tech and nuclear recycling company. Its goal is to help power plants provide affordable clean energy at scale, but right now its business is not scaling.
Oklo has traded publicly for three years, but it has yet to generate any revenue. Analysts don't see revenue until at least 2027. Losses are growing larger in the meantime. The stock rallied earlier this year, but it has shed more than half of its value since hitting an all-time high in May.
Last week it announced that it completed the first successful end-to-end demonstration of its advanced fuel recycling process. Investors will still have to be patient, though. Wood has had a couple of years, but she's patient enough to buy potential long-term winners when they're marked down.
3. GitLab
Business has slowed at GitLab, but the deceleration is relative. After three fiscal years of delivering top-line growth of 66% or better, revenue rose just 37% last year. Most companies would love to be growing at that clip, but investors are holding out for more.
GitLab started as an open-source platform to help programmers collaborate on code. It has evolved into a lucrative and flexible platform that helps an organization's tech team build, test, and deploy software.
The shares tumbled back in March, when the company warned that sales would decelerate even more this fiscal year. Analysts now see revenue growing at a 27% clip this year. The stock isn't cheap, but it has also landed well ahead of Wall Street's profit targets over the past four quarters.
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Rick Munarriz has positions in CrowdStrike. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CrowdStrike and GitLab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
