Will Graves’ Boardman Bay Capital Management is a New York-based technology, media, and telecom-focused hedge fund company. This long/short equity management firm is founded back in July 2012. It’s led by its founder and portfolio manager Will Graves and the team of “Silicon Valley and Wall Street veterans,” including Ken Brown, its COO/CFO, Jonathan Bloom, its investment analyst, and Neil Perry, its operational analyst.
Mr. Graves obtained a B.S. from the United States Naval Academy in engineering and political science in 1992 and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School in 2000. During his interesting career, for three years he served in the U.S. Navy as a Naval Officer. Prior to that, he campaigned for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, GA in the Star Class. In the 2000s, he worked as a (strategic and business) consultant in a number of firms, some of them being FireEye/Sequoia Capital, Deloitte, and Touche, etc. For two years, he served as a Director of Strategic Business in Terraspring, until 2002, while the following two years he worked at Sun Microsystems, dealing with business and corporate development. After working in Credit Suisse First Boston for 5 months in 2015, Mr. Graves joined Stark Investments in 2006, where he spent the next four years covering technology, media, and telecom sectors while serving as its Portfolio Manager. Prior to founding his own firm, he served as a Senior portfolio manager in Talpion Fund Management LP.
Boardman Bay Capital Management’s flagship strategy is focused on global TMT sectors. It employs a long/short fundamental strategy. By lаunching its sub-sector funds, the SaaS Opportunity fund and the Optical Opportunities fund Boardman, Bay broaden its investment field to software-as-a-service as well as optical technology companies that way capitalizing on particular growth areas in tech. These are two concentrated and opportunistic hedge fund portfolios that are more and more popular among investors. After all, “there is always a diverse opportunity set within TMT,” as the fund’s founder says, and being “confident that you have a product that’s differentiated” and ready to “to take a very long-term approach” is crucial when striving for excellence and good performance. As of March 2018, Boardman Bay Capital Management managed around $49.43 million of assets of pooled investment vehicles on a discretionary basis.
And while betting on technology companies was a dangerous game in last October, since stock declines resulted in hedge funds suffering losses, Boardman Bay’s recorded positive returns for 2018. However, returns did fluctuate over the last five years. For example, the collapse of tech stocks in 2014 caused some minor losses for the fund, since it invested in Facebook and other tech stocks. Luckily, telecommunications stocks “saved the party,” since the fund actually gained investing in them.
Its Boardman Bay Onshore, LP fund, for instance, did generate an astonishing return of 60.82% back in 2013, however, it lost 2.71 in 2014. In 2015 the fund returned 20.06%, only to have another down year in 2016 when it lost 7.61. In 2017, the fund was back on track returning 7.07%, while in 2018 YTD (October 10, 2018) the returns remained positive being 16.45%. Whereas its total return amounted to 101.50%, and compound annual return was 11.86. Boardman Bay Onshore, LP’s worst drawdown was 19.32. In addition, its Boardman SAAS Opportunities Fund also performed well, since it returned a net 44.97% year-to-date Aug. 31.
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As of December 31, 2018, the value of Boardman Bay Capital Management’s portfolio is $48.63 million, which indicates a $28.87 decrease over its value in the previous quarter. The top 10 holdings constitute 50.03% of the portfolio value. The fund bought 16 new stocks in the recent quarter, and dumped positions in 18 companies, pushing its total down to 44 holdings. The fund likes to invest in stocks that are in many hedge funds’ portfolios, therefore, at the end of Q4 in the fund’s portfolio, there were a few of the most popular stocks among hedge funds. More details about these portfolio changes you can find on the next page.
