Ark Investment Management CEO Cathie Wood appears to like positioning and workflow technology company Trimble(NASDAQ: TRMB). It's the largest holding in the Ark Space Exploration & Innovation ETF, and the fourth-largest in the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF. Wood is known for buying into companies with disruptive technology, and that's certainly the case with Trimble. Here's why Trimble could be a great addition to a diversified portfolio.
Disruptive technology
Trimble's disruptive technology comes from its growing capability to become a daily part of its customers' workflow. Whereas the company's history lies in hardware solutions that provide precise positioning, its future lies in supplanting that with modeling and data analytics capability to improve its customers' daily activity.
Trimble does more than provide precise points for a road or an infrastructure project. The company's solutions, such as Trimble Construction One (TC1), allow customers to design and precisely manage projects while receiving and analyzing real-time workflow data.
Disruptive valuation
Trimble's future lies in growing its subscription and services revenue, and this tends to be a higher-margin activity; Trimble's margin should grow over time. In addition, the company's transition means the critical metric to follow isn't so much its revenue and earnings as its annualized recurring revenue (ARR) and free cash flow (FCF).
ARR refers to the annualized value of its "subscription, maintenance and support, and recurring transaction revenue," representing its recurring revenue. As ARR grows, it will drop down into the cash flow line -- a common concept among companies growing their recurring revenue.
Image source: Getty Images.
The following table shows the disparity between Trimble's revenue and ARR growth. The former implies mid-single-digit growth, while the latter suggests Trimble aims for mid-teens growth.
In case you are wondering just how strong Trimble's ARR growth is, one answer comes from management's discussion on the recent earnings call. As mentioned earlier, within its architects, engineers, contractors, and owners (AECO) end market, CEO Rob Painter said he sees Trimble's TC1 as "a commercial framework around prepackaged bundled offerings."
Consequently, Trimble can sell more software to customers within that framework as it develops new solutions and customers utilize its technology more. This also helps the company cross-sell solutions, and Painter noted, "As measured by cross-sell activity, more than 20% of 2023 annualized contract value, or ACV bookings and AECO were cross-sell bookings. In the fourth quarter, this number accelerated to over 25%".
Metric | 2023 | 2024 Estimated |
|---|---|---|
Organic revenue growth | 4%* | 4%-7%* |
Organic annualized recurring revenue growth | 13% | 11%-13% |
Data source: Trimble presentations. *adjusted by excluding the forthcoming joint venture with AGCO.
Trimble's impressive free-cash-flow growth
I omitted FCF from the table above because, here again, the headline numbers don't do full justice to the improvement in its business. The company grew FCF by 60% in 2023 to $555 million, converting FCF from non-GAAP (adjusted) net income at a rate of 80%.
Turning to 2024, management expects to convert FCF from non-GAAP net income by 85%. Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) is forecast to be $2.60 to $2.70 (net income is used to calculate EPS), so based on the 85% conversion rate, its FCF per share will be in the range of $2.21 per share to $2.30, or about $550 million to $570 million.
Those figures don't imply much growth in the $555 million in 2023, but consider that CFO David Barnes noted some one time items impacting cash flow. Absent these items, Free cash flow should be about equal to non-GAAP net income.
If you assume underlying FCF conversion is 100% (implied in Barnes' commentary), then FCF per share in 2024 will be something closer to $2.60 to $2.70, or $650 million to $670 million, representing growth of 17% to 21%.
Image source: Getty Images.
A Cathie Wood stock to buy
This kind of expansion in ARR and FCF and Trimble's impressive cross-selling growth indicates that the company's strategy is working, even in the face of challenging end markets. With this kind of underlying growth, the company is well placed to benefit when some of its more challenged end markets, like transportation, logistics, surveying, and residential construction, improve.
Trimble's impressive underlying growth and potential make it an excellent stock for investors.
Should you invest $1,000 in Trimble right now?
Before you buy stock in Trimble, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Trimble wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than tripled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.
*Stock Advisor returns as of February 12, 2024
Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Trimble. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
