June Portfolio Update: One Out, Three In
A busier month than usual. One position closed, two added to, and three brand-new names entering the book.
To read our full disclaimer, click here.
It’s been a busy month, and a productive one.
I’ve cleared out a position I no longer wanted to own, followed through on two adds I’d been building toward, and - the part I’m most pleased about - opened three entirely new positions.
For a while the bottom of this portfolio had gone quiet. No fresh ideas being auditioned, no pipeline of future winners coming through. That’s now fixed, and I’ve rebuilt the lower half of the book with three new names I think have real asymmetry.
Full, dedicated theses on each of them are coming over the next few weeks. But since they’re already in the portfolio, here’s the preview:
Three New Positions
A US specialty pharma rolling up orphan drugs. The first new name buys assets that big pharma can’t be bothered to commercialise properly - therapies for rare diseases with small patient populations - then monetises them through dedicated rare-disease infrastructure. Ten commercial products, already GAAP profitable, and a dense stack of near-term clinical and regulatory catalysts. This is the largest of the three new positions, because it’s the deepest-researched and the highest-conviction.
A patented advanced-materials business running the ingredient-brand playbook. The second runs the same model as Gore-Tex or Dyneema: its material gets built into someone else’s premium product, the end brand does the marketing, and the company collects a margin every single metre. The entire thesis hinges on one milestone landing in the next few months. Explicitly speculative, and sized accordingly.
A profitable, cash-rich communications microcap hiding in plain sight. The third trades like a lumpy hardware business while quietly building a recurring service-revenue tail behind every device it deploys. Consistently profitable, cash-heavy relative to its size, and almost completely off-screen.
Three names, three different risk profiles, all sized as toeholds - small starting positions that have to earn their way up.
More on exactly what that means in my companion piece on portfolio construction, out next Monday.
In the Rest of This Post
Behind the paywall, for paid subscribers:
The position I closed this month, at a loss - and the simple test that made it an easy decision
The two positions I added to, where they now sit, and the bar I set for averaging down
Exactly where all three new names sit in the portfolio, with weights
The full portfolio table, every position and every weight
What each position has to do from here to keep its place - including one core holding now on probation
How I’m thinking about the shape of the book going into a busier month