An Honor From George Gilder






Today, our firm, and specifically our CIO, Gerry Frigon, was highlighted in preeminent technologist George Gilder's "Daily Prophecy" newsletter.

"I consider George Gilder to be the foremost American sage of the last sixty years.  His predictions on technology, economics, and society have been spot on, and at 80 years of age he is going as fast and strong as he ever has.  Without a doubt the lessons I have learned from George over the years far surpass whatever lessons he may have gleaned from me.  Most importantly, George is a friend and partner unlike any other.  I am blessed to know him.  Thank you for such an honor George!  I am humbled. Thank you!" - Gerry Frigon.

Read George Gilder's Newsletter About Gerry


Disclosures: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC (“Taylor Frigon”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Taylor Frigon. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Taylor Frigon is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the Taylor Frigon’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request. If you are a Taylor Frigon client, please remember to contact Taylor Frigon, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services.
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Narrative-based Investment Strategy In The News...

Achievement on Flipboard by Joshua Zhang





Our Chief Investment Officer, Gerry Frigon, was featured in a series of articles recently in which he describes our investment strategy and the reasons for its success, as well as provides insight on the increasing impact of tech companies on the market...

MarketWatch (first article)
Wealth Professional
Value Walk







Disclosures: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC (“Taylor Frigon”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Taylor Frigon. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Taylor Frigon is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the Taylor Frigon’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request. If you are a Taylor Frigon client, please remember to contact Taylor Frigon, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services.
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The Power of Time

All About Your Body Clock

We have emphasized the importance of a long term view of investing for as long as we have been in the professional investment business.  Recently, our CIO, Gerry Frigon, was quoted in Rocket HQ regarding the importance of "staying the course" during difficult times like we have just experienced in the last few months with the COVID-19 panic.

Frigon was quoted in March 2020 as saying:

"Don't panic and liquidate long-term investments," Frigon says. "This kind of thinking is dangerous, because when the market turns it happens so rapidly, it is shocking. The more the market recovers, the more difficult it becomes emotionally for those who got out to buy back in, often resulting in tremendous losses for those who panic-sold near the lows."

We have stated such things many times in the past, most notably in this post from March 2, 2009, in which we all but begged investors not to "get off the train" during the market rout that was occurring in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.  Remarkably, barely a week later, the bottom was hit on March 9, 2009 and the market exploded forward for the next decade.

The bull market born on March 9, 2009 ended in March 2020 with a massive panic sell-off, exacerbated by the crisis industry's over-hyping and the government's overreaction to the COVID-19 virus.

Since our CIO  uttered those words in March 2020, the market averages climbed their way back to almost break even by June 30, 2020, finishing the first half of 2020 down a few percentage points, on average. And our own Core Growth Strategy finished the first half up well over 20% YTD!

How many more times will this have to happen before the average investor realizes the folly of trying to guess what the market is going to do?




Disclosures: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC (“Taylor Frigon”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Taylor Frigon. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Taylor Frigon is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the Taylor Frigon’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request. If you are a Taylor Frigon client, please remember to contact Taylor Frigon, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services.
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Have you heard of this company? Vapotherm (VAPO)




We first began researching Vapotherm* in January of 2019, long before anyone would have ever dreamed that events taking place in 2020 were possible. The company had only recently gone public (in November of 2018) and had achieved about $42 million in sales the previous year -- well below the estimated break-even for the business of between $120 million and $150 million.

What attracted us to learn more about the business was the potential for Vapotherm's technology, a non-invasive delivery system for high-velocity respiratory support, to create a paradigm shift in ventilation treatment for patients having difficulty breathing on their own and potentially displace mask-based NIPPV as the standard-of-care (NIPPV stands for "non-invasive positive pressure ventilation" which uses a mask with positive pressure to assist patient breathing much like the CPAP masks used to treat sleep disordered breathing). 

There are a variety of reasons why Vapotherm's "Hi-VNI" technology (Hi-VNI stands for "high-velocity nasal insufflation") is a valuable tool for treating undifferentiated respiratory failure, including the fact that a significant percentage of patients simply do not tolerate a mask, as well as the fact that Vapotherm's solution uses small-bore nasal cannulas (or cannulae) inserted into the nostrils, which enables the patient to eat and drink more easily (tasks that are impossible for a patient wearing a mask). 

An important aspect of the story involves the delivery of high-velocity oxygenated air in order to help clear lungs of carbon dioxide during respiratory failure: the fact that their device delivers heated, humidified, oxygenated air at higher velocities differentiates Vapotherm's Hi-VNI product (the Precision Flow device) from traditional high-flow nasal cannulas (HFNC) with which many physicians are already familiar (Vapotherm's Precision Flow is considered a specific type of high-flow nasal cannula device: the differentiating factor is the fact that Vapotherm's delivers high-velocity oxygenated air). 

When we spoke with Vapotherm's CEO Joe Army (in early 2019), he used his favorite metaphor of clearing a work bucket full of mud with a hose (a very effective comparison for understanding how high-velocity air clears out the carbon dioxide). If you put a hose in the bucket of mud and gunk, and turn on the water, the water flow will eventually clean out the mud. However, Joe explains, if you put your thumb on the end of the hose opening, the same amount of water will still be flowing through over the same amount of time, but that same volume of water will now flow with much greater velocity and clean out the bucket more rapidly and effectively. 

The same principle applies to the high-velocity oxygenated air: delivered at higher velocity, it will swirl around in the nasal cavities and flush out the old CO2 more rapidly and more effectively than will low-velocity gas.

The following chart, adapted from this study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine in January of 2018, shows that Hi-VNI reduces CO2 in patients at least as effectively as the current standard-of-care (NPPI: the positive-pressure mask).






















At that time, Vapotherm was working hard to get their Precision Flow device into more emergency departments to help with patients in the ER needing breathing assistance, but the company actually got its start back in 1999, long before its IPO, focusing primarily on applications in the neonatal intensive care units (or NICUs), helping doctors and nurses who treat premature babies and other newborns in need of respiratory assistance (their products started finding their way into the NICU in 2000). 

We were impressed by a new product that Vapotherm was developing for the NICU: they recently won approval in Europe for a product called the Oxygen Assist Module for their Precision Flow system which provides automated delivery of oxygen to keep babies in the desired blood oxygen level (SpO2) range, and has been shown to do so more precisely than with human monitoring and adjustment alone. 

As part of our research, we spoke to an experienced NICU doctor, who told us that "breathing is the single most-common reason for a baby to go to the NICU," and explained why keeping the infant in the desired range between too much oxygen and too little oxygen is so important (too much oxygen can lead to too much blood vessel and tissue growth behind the retina of a newborn, leading to possible retinopathy and vision damage).

We also spoke with an experienced ER doctor who had not previously heard of Vapotherm, and so we arranged for him to assess their Precision Flow, and he told us that in his assessment it was an "impressive product with a lot of potential" and "very easy to use."

Based on our own research into the company's filings, our conversation with doctors and with the company itself, our conversation with analysts, and our assessment of the potential for the company's technology to create a change in the standard of care, we took an initial position in Vapotherm for our clients in June of 2019. 

As with many other companies with innovative technologies which we expected would create change in their industries, but which we felt might take some years to gain traction, the pressures of the COVID crisis that became most serious beginning in early 2020 dramatically accelerated the adoption of Vapotherm's Hi-VNI technology in emergency rooms and other healthcare settings.

In their most-recent earnings call, from May 5 of this year, CEO Joe Army explained that Vapotherm's business had been "significantly and sustainably transformed over the past quarter." He said:
At the beginning of the pandemic, high-velocity high-flow oxygen therapy was not viewed as a first-line therapy for treating the respiratory distress experienced by many COVID-19 patients, as physicians believed patients requiring more than supplemental oxygen would need to be placed on a mechanical ventilator. Now, the CDC, WHO, and NIH, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Chinese, German, Italian, and Australian Thoracic Societies, and hospitals that are getting hit with the COVID-19 surge around the country all recognized our technology as an appropriate first-line therapy. In the pre-pandemic world, the development and alignment of these guidelines would have taken a lot longer to come together in my opinion.
He noted that thus far in 2020, the company's global installed base of products had grown by more than 3,500 units, whereas it grew by only 2,500 throughout the entire year of 2019 (revenues in 2019 were around $48 million, as the company made some major changes to the salesforce and sales strategy). Sales in 2020 are expected to top $84 million.

Perhaps most notable on the call was an actual patient story that Joe Army shared at the end of his prepared remarks, about a 54-year-old male patient in New York City who came into a hospital intensive care unit in a state of respiratory distress and an oxygen saturation rate in the low 60% range. Army said:
This low saturation rate is very dangerous for patients. Our sales rep learned that the patient's doctor wanted to intubate the patient and put them on a ventilator. But this patient refused to be intubated. Our sales rep was there at the time, assembling the new Precision Flow units that had just been delivered. The doctor grabbed one of the units and put the patient on at 40 liters at 100% oxygen. Our sales rep learned that within ten minutes, the patient's oxygen saturation rate was at 95%. his work of breathing was reduced, his respiratory rate had declined, and he now seemed to be sitting comfortably in his bed. Our sales rep shared with me that from his perspective, this patient went from almost being put on the mechanical ventilator and potentially dying, to being put on Vapotherm and being discharged home three days later to recover.
It is examples like this one which help explain why our long-time approach has always been to focus on analyzing and evaluating and predicting the future of individual businesses, rather than on trying to predict markets

It also illustrates a fact we have observed over and over again during this recent crisis (as well as during previous periods of economic strain): that when a longer-term narrative regarding the direction that an industry will go in the future is the correct narrative, times of stress will often accelerate that narrative, by providing the catalyst for change to happen now (change that would have eventually happened anyway, but might have taken more time under conditions of less stress).

We could not have predicted what the first half of 2020 would look like when we were researching and eventually buying equity in Vapotherm during the first half of 2019, but we believe the above discussion helps illustrate what we call "the power of narrative investing."


* At the time of publication, the principals of Taylor Frigon Capital owned securities issued by  Vapotherm (VAPO).

Disclosures: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC (“Taylor Frigon”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Taylor Frigon. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Taylor Frigon is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the Taylor Frigon’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request. If you are a Taylor Frigon client, please remember to contact Taylor Frigon, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services.








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Investment Climate July 2020: Making History...While Looking Ahead









The second quarter of 2020 will go down as one of the best quarters in the history of the stock market.  The unprecedented and swift recession that was “self-inflicted” by government responses to COVID-19, the world over, bottomed during the quarter and stock markets sensed that turn and rallied fiercely.  On average, markets made up most of what they lost in the first quarter, ending June 30, 2020 with year-to-date returns down only a few percentage points after being down around 20% in the first quarter of 2020. 

It is hard to believe so much has happened in such a short period of time.  The crisis industry (otherwise known as the media) had endless crises to highlight given the COVID-19 response and then the civil unrest that spread across cities around the United States.  Nonetheless, the market action is testimony to the importance of staying fully invested in times of extreme volatility and crisis.  Simply put, it has been our view for decades, and we have regularly pointed out, that trading-based strategies are hazardous to most investors’ lives, and that was proven handily this year. 

As we pointed out in our last Investment Climate, our view has always been that it is crucial to look at investing in the context of the business and not the stock, or the stock market.  Our TFCM Core Growth Strategy experienced the best two months in its history and finished the first half of 2020 up over 23%.  This was the result of painstakingly applying our narrative-based investment approach.   

Many of our clients have asked us what specifically drove this significant outperformance.  We believe what we are witnessing is a recognition, in difficult times, of real and sustainable businesses in core technology, medical technology and financial technology.  Frankly, while we certainly don’t expect this type of performance every quarter (or year for that matter!), we believe we are in the early stages of growth for most of our companies.  And while we have certainly outperformed in our growth strategies over the years, we believe the market focus on trendier themes such as social networking, “green” industries, and app-based software (as opposed to platform software), resulted in an undervaluation of the types of businesses we favor (and the narratives which apply to those businesses) over the past several years. There is nothing like real concern on the part of investors to cause them to seek out sustainable business models. 

As for the overall economic and market environment, we believe the world overestimated how many businesses were “shut down”.  We mentioned in our previous commentary that we spent a significant amount of time speaking to company management teams during the dark days of the downturn and, in general, they were reporting that they were still functioning.  The fact that the hardest-hit businesses were those that were the most consumer-facing, and thus visible to the average person, gave the impression to most observers that things were far worse than in reality.  This is not to suggest that the downturn was not significant, it absolutely was and still is, but it was not quite as bad as was expected -- and that is the primary reason that the markets have reacted so positively and swiftly. In our view, the reaction has been quite rational. 

Going forward, we believe there are important challenges to overcome.  We have never witnessed such actions from government as we have experienced in the current situation.  The massive amount of spending gives us serious concern, not to mention the more philosophical, yet pertinent questions surrounding the role of government in society.  These issues go beyond the scope of what we address in our commentaries, and yet have real implications for the free enterprise system in which we live and which are required for our companies to thrive.  

These days, it is more important than ever to have a very solid sense of the trends that will drive business in the coming years.  It is imperative that investors pay attention to those who run the businesses in which they invest to be certain they are up to the challenges facing them in the twenty-first century.  Now more than ever, predicting the business is far more important than predicting the market. 


Disclosures: Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by Taylor Frigon Capital Management LLC (“Taylor Frigon”), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Taylor Frigon. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. Taylor Frigon is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of the Taylor Frigon’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request. If you are a Taylor Frigon client, please remember to contact Taylor Frigon, in writing, if there are any changes in your personal/financial situation or investment objectives for the purpose of reviewing/evaluating/revising our previous recommendations and/or services, or if you would like to impose, add, or to modify any reasonable restrictions to our investment advisory services.
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