cnbc.com
Garret Van Waggoner as I recall trimmed his CMTO position last year but this article implies he has been buying ( again). There are a couple charts on the CNBC wesbite that show that CMTO is one of his largest positions:
<<"In a nutshell, we dig deeper into the stories than most people do," says Raiford
Garrabrant, one of Van Wagoner?s chief analysts. Garrabrant was working with
Van Wagoner when he was managing the Govett Smaller Companies fund
{GSCQX} in the mid-1990s. (Garrabrant followed Van Wagoner when he left
Govett in 1996 to start his own firm.)
"We all think more like portfolio managers than analysts," Garrabrant says. The
entire team works together, meeting with companies, analyzing data, and
testing out the newest technology to decide which companies have the product
and the management to create staying power.
Their strength is in technology, so that?s where Van Wagoner tends to front-load
his portfolios.
The Van Wagoner Post Venture Fund has a 45 percent weighting in the sector
and rode it to a 237 percent return in 1999. It?s up nearly 5 percent through the
opening weeks of this year. The Van Wagoner Mid-Cap is nearly half
technology, and it?s up 4.69 percent this year after a 127 percent return last
year.
"What we are seeing in terms of growth opportunities right now is
unprecedented," Garrabrant says. "Unfortunately, investment opportunities are
not quite as good."
High valuations have rubbed the sheen off of some of these stocks, but Van
Wagoner and his group are still seeing a lot of potential in broadband access
and the race between the phone companies and the cable companies to get
there first.
"Our focus has been on the arms merchants ? the people selling the technology
to the companies that are trying to sell you the service," he says.
The group has been buying up a lot of Copper Mountain {CMNT} for all of its
funds because it sells the phone lines needed to provide the service. Following
that same angle, Van Wagoner has also been a big buyer of Com21 {CMTO},
which sells high-speed equipment to the broadband market.
Another area poised for explosive growth is wireless Internet, Garrabrant says,
so the funds are investing in companies like Phone.com {PHCM} and RF Micro
Devices {RFMD}.
But the fund company?s success is based on much more than a strong showing
in the technology sector, Brewer says.
"[Van Wagoner] says he?s just been at the right place at the right time, but he?s
been in the right companies as well," he says. "I know tech funds that don?t
come near his performance."
All of this technological savvy, though, creates a lot of overlap among the Van
Wagoner funds, along with a lot of volatility. That?s good news for the investors
who missed out on the Emerging Growth and Micro-Cap funds before they
closed and still want part of the action.
But the company has announced plans to close the remaining three funds if and
when they get too big to maneuver. It will cap the Technology and Mid-Cap
funds at $2 billion, and the Post-Venture fund at $1 billion.>> |
