Investment management company Headwaters Capital recently released its second quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund declined by -20.5% compared to a -16.9% decline for the Russell Mid Cap index. High energy prices as a result of the Russian invasion affected the performance of the portfolio. You can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2022.
Headwaters Capital discussed stocks like Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) in the second quarter investor letter. It is the fund’s largest holding. Headquartered in Foster City, California, Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) is a cloud-based IT, security, and compliance solutions provider. On August 22, 2022, Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) stock closed at $151.68 per share. One-month return of Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) was 20.87% and its shares gained 35.39% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) has a market capitalization of $5.819 billion.
Here is what Headwaters Capital specifically said about Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS):
“Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) was founded in 1999 and provides vulnerability management software to both SMBs and enterprise customers. Vulnerability management software provides a continuous view of security and compliance across all of a company’s assets including on-premise, end-points, cloud and mobile. The easiest way to think about QLYS’s original VM solution is that it provided a dashboard that monitored all potential threats to a network and helped IT departments prioritize which vulnerabilities were the highest risk. QLYS was a pioneer in the industry as they were one of the first companies to offer a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) solution as opposed to the traditional license offerings that proliferated at the time. While QLYS’ VM software has always provided an industry leading dashboard to monitor weaknesses, it provided limited functionality to respond to these vulnerabilities. More recently, QLYS has increased the functionality of its software through the rollout of Detection and Response capabilities (VMDR) and extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities in late 2021.
The cybersecurity space has been marked by a preference of customers for point solution expertise as opposed to a winner take all solution. This market structure is driven by the complex nature of assets that need protection, the dynamic nature of security threats and the critical nature of cybersecurity, which leads to a customer preference for quality over cost. Historically, cybersecurity was best served by firewalls, which provided a ring fence around assets that were physically located on a network. Firewalls are increasingly becoming obsolete in the cybersecurity world as the network perimeter has effectively disappeared due to the growing adoption of SaaS solutions and new connected devices that connect to the network from multiple new endpoints. This trend has only accelerated following COVID. As more devices and software tools connect from outside of the traditional firewall perimeter, the importance of security monitoring tools such as VM, VMDR and XDR has increased. In many ways, vulnerability management is the foundation of cybersecurity as it provides the dashboard for monitoring all potential security gaps. QLYS’ software can provide critical data about which assets are exposed to specific threats and can increasingly help IT departments prioritize and remediate these vulnerabilities.
Understanding QLYS’s history is important to gaining confidence in QLYS’ ability to maintain revenue growth going forward. QLYS was almost perfectly positioned earlier this decade to take advantage of both the transition in the software market from license to SaaS solutions as well as the cybersecurity trend away from firewalls as devices increasingly moved beyond a physical perimeter. Given the large TAM, industry tailwinds and a market leading product, QLYS was able to growth revenues at a +20% CAGR from 2012-2018. Even more impressive, QLYS was able to accomplish this growth with limited investment in R&D or its sales force. R&D as a percentage of revenues declined from 22% in 2012 to 16% in 2018 while S&M declined from 40% in 2012 to 22% in 2018. Consequently, QLYS operates with one of the highest EBITDA margins in the industry at 45%. The ability for QLYS to post such consistent revenue growth despite under-investing in product development and sales is evidence of the strong competitive positioning of QLYS’ software and the critical nature of the product…” (Click here to read more)
Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) is not on the list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) was held by 23 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter, which was 23 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) in another article and shared Polen Capital’s views on the company. You can check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2022 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other prominent investors.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
