Today’s Take: The best companies to invest in have innovative CEOs.
He fell asleep!
Back in the early days of Microsoft, founder Bill Gates was making a pitch to include Kodak’s products to the company’s CEO.
The meeting didn’t end well after Kodak CEO Kay Whitmore dozed off.
Even though a Kodak engineer created the first-ever digital camera in 1975, Whitmore refused to embrace the future of digital photography.
It was a huge breakthrough. But Whitmore lacked vision and excitement for the technology. He ignored the camera and kept it locked up.
And even after he was fired in 1993, his choices haunted the company…
Kodak spent decades struggling in a “too little, too late” effort to break into the digital market. Eventually, it was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2012, and shares nosedived.
And it’s a great example of how important an experienced, innovative leader is for a company…
The Best Companies Have Visionary Leaders
If you have a lackluster CEO, it doesn’t matter how great the business or its breakthroughs are. It’ll almost never take off.
That’s why, when it comes to investing, I always focus on the CEO and how much value they can add to their company.
If I’m investing in a company, I want to know the person who is guiding it day by day.
Because if that person screws up, doesn’t care and loses money, that’s going to hurt shareholder value. And that’s the last thing you or I want for our portfolio.
But I bet you, dollars to donuts, when you speak to money managers or financial planners … they don’t have a clue who the CEO is, and they never follow them!
To me, that never made any sense. I’ve learned throughout my career that a great CEO can make all the difference.
That’s why, every month, I focus on the CEO for Alpha Investors. And it’s paid off big time, too…
A New Opportunity With a Great CEO
Take a look at a few of the great CEOs in our Alpha Investor model portfolio…
- HCA Healthcare: CEO Samuel Hazen has about four decades in the hospital industry. That includes helping increase revenue of HCA’s Western Group by more than 60%. He’s also helped increase HCA’s hospital count. Today, Alpha Investors are up over 122% in just over a year.
- Arista Networks: Jayshree Ullal became Arista’s CEO in 2008, when the company was still in its startup phase. Since then, she’s helped to grow the company’s revenues from just $72 million to over $2.4 billion! And that growth has benefited Alpha Investors, too. Since March 2020, the position has seen profits of nearly 124%.
- Marvell Technologies: When Matt Murphy joined Marvell as CEO in 2016, he got straight to work in cutting unnecessary costs to boost the company’s profits. He helped get Marvell on the path to taking advantage of the 5G industry. In under three years, Murphy took the business from failing to profitable. And Alpha Investors have seen gains of over 182% since February 2019.
Now, these companies are all trading above my buy-up-to prices. So, I don’t recommend buying shares today.
But there are many more opportunities in the market just like them. In fact, I’m seeing one right now with a CEO who’s knocking it out of the park.
This company is at the heart of the 3D-printing industry that’s seeing huge tailwinds right now. And its CEO has over three decades of experience in the industry. He’s not just some empty suit with an MBA. He’s grown previous companies on a global scale.
And the best part about this company is that it has an added bonus — a catalyst that should drive its stock price even higher in a shorter time frame.
This is a special situation that you won’t want to miss out on. So, be sure to find out all the details on how you could take advantage of this opportunity right here.
Regards,
Founder, Alpha Investor
