Technology purchasing appears to potentially be on the rise — analysis provider Gartner’s recent global software buying trends report found 61% of businesses plan to increase their technology investment this year.
Correspondingly, institutional investors and hedge funds have snapped up shares of a number of tech companies that provide business-oriented products in recent months.
In the second quarter of 2024, global value-oriented and event-driven hedge fund Armistice Capital, for instance, and institutional investment firm State Street Corporation increased their shares of Workday, a financial and human capital management and student information system software vendor.
Armistice Capital augmented its Workday holdings by roughly 264%, reaching a total of 150,476 shares; State Street added 143,415 shares of the company, according to Nasdaq.
Workday’s platform is reportedly used by more than 10,500 organizations globally, in a variety of industries, including more than 60%[EB1] of the Fortune 500.
The company’s recent developments include launching Workday Ventures, its strategic capital arm, which has made 10 new AI-related business technology investments since the beginning of 2023, according to a press release Workday issued in September
Recent 13F filing information published by Fintel shows Armistice Capital also added shares of Datadog Inc. in the most recent quarter. The New York-based fund now has 199,183, a more than 89,000 share increase from the number it previously possessed.
According to Fintel, 1,509 institutional owners and shareholders have filed 13D/G or 13F forms with the Securities Exchange Commission that list another tech company, Datadog Inc., as one of their holdings.
In the most recent quarter, Nasdaq’s records show Vanguard Group bumped its holdings of the technology provider up by an extra 1,091,534 shares, bringing its total to 28,522,641. Other investors took a similar approach — such as Armistice Capital, which opted to increase its stake in the company, boosting its shares by 89,062, which equates to an approximately 81% increase, according to Nasdaq.
Datadog’s SaaS platform [EB2] automates infrastructure and application performance monitoring, log management and other capabilities to provide a real-time view of its customers’ technology stack.
Businesses utilize the product, the company says, for uses [EB3] such as enabling digital transformation and cloud migration, securing applications and infrastructure, and tracking key business metrics.
[SUBHED] Health-Focused Investments
The business tech sector isn’t the only area hedge funds and institutional investors have pursued opportunities in this year.
As in previous quarters, some also increased their investment in a number of organizations that support medically related scientific research and development — such as Charles Rivers Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company with a focus on preclinical and clinical laboratory, gene therapy and cell therapy services for the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology industries.
Edgestream Partners L.P., for instance, purchased 16,725 shares of the company’s stock in the second quarter, which MarketBeat says was valued at approximately $3,455,000.
In addition to Point72 Asset Management L.P. and Meritage Group LP, which both increased the amount of shares they own of Charles River Laboratories International last quarter, Armistice Capital upped its stake in the medical research company by more than 70% in the second quarter. The fund now holds 119,071 shares, according to Nasdaq.
Life sciences solution provider Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. also garnered interest from investors such as Signature Resources Capital Management LLC. In August, MarketBeat reported the investment management organization had acquired 35 additional shares of the company in the second quarter, increasing its overall investment in Thermo Fisher Scientific by 318.2%.
Armistice Capital grew its Thermo Fisher Scientific holdings last quarter, moving from 14,976 shares to 56,158, according to Fintel[EB4] ; Nasdaq data indicates Morgan Stanley added nearly 3% more shares and now holds 12,097,513.
Thermo Fisher Scientific has furthered its growth strategy by launching a range of high-impact, innovative new products, according to a press release it issued in July. The company reported a revenue of $10.54 billion in the second quarter.
Morgan Stanley and Armistice Capital also showed an interest in robotic product provider Intuitive Surgical during the past quarter. Morgan Stanley’s purchase resulted in it owning 5,704,119 shares of the company; Armistice Capital also increased its Intuitive Surgical holdings, bringing its total amount of shares to 71,227 [EB5] as of the June 30 reporting date
Intuitive Surgical, which was founded in 1995, designs products to assist with minimally invasive surgery. Its da Vinci Surgical System[EB6] , for example, supplies 3D high-definition views, giving surgeons a 10-times more magnified perspective than the human eye is able to produce.
A number of investors also obtained more shares of Exact Sciences Corp.[EB7] during the second quarter — including Armistice Capital, which now has 1,400,086 shares of the company’s stock[EB8] , an approximately 92% increase from its previous holdings, according to Nasdaq.
Nasdaq’s records also signify that Wellington Management Group’s holdings also rose in the second quarter, escalating by 38% to a total of 14,788,411 shares; Geode Capital Management, too, added more Exact Sciences stock. The investment management firm [EB9] now has 3,098,097 shares, a 4.3% increase from before.
Exact Sciences Corporation, a molecular diagnostics company that is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, specializes in early stage cancer detection. Its offerings include the Cologuard at-home DNA test for colorectal cancer, which the company introduced in 2014.
