Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Discovery Fund” first quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. In what turned out to be a challenging first quarter, Baron Discovery Fund (the “Fund”) decreased 16.30% (Institutional Shares), which was 3.67% below the Russell 2000 Growth Index (the “Benchmark”). Try to spend some time taking a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to be informed about their best picks for 2022.
In its Q1 2022 investor letter, Baron Discovery Fund mentioned GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 2011, GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) is a San Francisco, California-based software company with a $7.0 billion market capitalization. GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) delivered a -45.90% return since the beginning of the year and it closed at $45.14 per share on June 15, 2022.
Here is what Baron Discovery Fund has to say about GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:
“While not highlighted in our top purchases, this quarter we also initiated a position in GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) GitLab provides a software development and IT operations (DevOps) platform that developers, product managers, IT operations teams, and security professionals use to collaborate throughout the software development lifecycle. For developers, the GitLab platform addresses the planning, creation, verification, testing, and deployment of code. Once code is shipped into production, IT operations professionals can use GitLab to continuously protect and monitor code and identify any issues or bugs for further updates. The GitLab platform helps more than 15,000 customers reduce time to market for new applications, automate continuous feature updates, reduce security vulnerabilities, and retain developer talent. GitLab is the only end-to-end DevOps platform that addresses all stages of the software lifecycle using a single codebase and unified data model, giving it a competitive advantage over point solutions. GitLab employs an open-source model, which has led to viral adoption among 30 million developers. More than 2,600 of these developers are active contributors to GitLab’s product, enabling the company to release upgrades much faster than competitors. These consistent product enhancements have led to low churn and strong expansion in GitLab’s existing customer base, driving a best-in-class 150%-plus dollar-based net retention rate (a measure of current customer average growth, where a value over 100% equals positive growth).
GitLab is in the early innings of monetizing its large active user base, and with only 0.5% penetration of the $43 billion application development software market, we see a long runway for growth ahead. The company also has a unique remote-first culture (its workers can work anywhere) that allows it to attract and retain talented engineers and salespeople from all over the globe with very little overhead, giving us confidence in its ability to grow profitably over time.”
Photo by Danial Igdery on Unsplash
Our calculations show that GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) was in 30 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2022, compared to 27 funds in the previous quarter. GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) delivered an 11.93% return in the past 3 months.
In April 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q1 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
