Cathie Wood has some ground to make up this year. The Ark Invest co-founder, CEO, and investor finds her most popular exchange-traded fund in the red in 2024, a bad look in a rising market. After trouncing the market last year, can she get back on track? She is not going to be standing still.
Wood kicked off this fresh trading week by adding to some of her existing positions and pruning some of her other stakes. She added to her Toast (NYSE: TOST), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), and SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) shares on Monday. Let’s take a closer look at these three purchases.
1. Toast
Cathie Wood has a knack for buying some of her favorite stocks on dips, but this time she ordered a side of Toast when it was sunny side up. Shares of the company behind the popular point-of-sale system for eateries moved higher on Monday after an analyst initiated coverage with a buy rating and a Street-high price target of $32.
Toast has come a long way since taking a hit after offering weak near-term guidance following a mixed third-quarter report three months ago. The stock has soared 77% since bottoming out in late November, hitting a seven-month high on Monday after the bullish Wall Street pro nod.
Image source: Getty Images.
The provider of cloud-based software solutions for the restaurant industry posted a 30% increase in revenue for the fourth quarter. It was just shy of the market’s top-line expectations, but investors were relieved to see that it wasn’t worse after Toast warned in November that transaction volume per eatery was trending negatively early in the quarter. Toast is making up for the industry lull by growing its reach.
Its annualized recurring revenue run rate is now $1.2 billion, a 35% improvement from where it was at the end of 2022. Its adjusted gross profit and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose even higher. Toast also announced layoffs and a share buyback, signs that it’s serious about cost controls as well as sensing value in its ascending shares.
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