From today's
GuruFocus Real Time Picks
reports, mutual fund company
Columbia Wanger
has increased its Exa Corp. (
EXA
) stake by 816.78 percent, turning the miniscule position into
10.8 ownership of the company's outstanding shares.
Massachusetts-based Exa is simulation-driven software products
and services provider, largely serving the transportation market
through its array of products that help companies test such
things as fluid flow and heat transfer. Through its simulation
software, Exa enables companies to improve the efficiencies of
their design and engineering processes as well as improve costs,
without having to spend money on expensive physical prototypes
and tests.
Having only been declared a public company since June 2012, Exa's
stock price has slightly gone down since its IPO, trading today
at $9.47 from $11 seven months ago.
Columbia purchased Exa stock in the third quarter of last year,
starting off with 157,517 shares. This placed the fund at 1.19
percent owner, and represented 0.0079 percent of its portfolio,
barely making any impact at all to the 323-stock portfolio.
Today, Columbia holds a little over 1.4 million shares, and is
the only investor on GuruFocus who has dabbled in the company's
shares (
EXA: Guru Trades
).
Exa's revenue grew by 9 percent comparable to year-over-year
data, according to its third quarter financial results. Exa
President and CEO Stephen Remondi noted that its revenue growth
represented 13 percent on a constant currency basis, which is
slightly below what the company anticipated, and is due to what
he believes are near-term budget constraints for Exa's customers,
as well as the delay of new projects and license activity.
"We believe customers became incrementally more cautious with
expenses going into calendar year-end, due to increased
macroeconomic uncertainty, particularly in the manufacturing
markets we serve," Remondi said. "With new budgets opening up in
the New Year and short-term deliverables which still must be
met...we are optimistic that these delays will be short-lived.
Furthermore, we are confident that the long-term drivers of our
growth remain firmly intact and that Exa is well positioned to
lead our customers' efforts in simulation-based design in order
to meet their increasingly stringent requirements for fuel
efficiency, noise, and thermal management."
Exa's new presence in public market trading is accompanied by a
1-star ranking in Business Predictability on GuruFocus. Its stock
is up 2 percent this afternoon.
As the eighth largest manager of long-term mutual fund assets,
many of
Columbia Wanger
's managed funds have delivered double-digit returns in 2012.
They include: the Columbia Acorn Emerging Markets Fund A, which
returned 30.86 percent; the Columbia Large Cap Growth Fund A,
which returned 20.15 percent; the Columbia Contrarian Core Fund
A, which returned 18.33 percent; and the Columbia Mid Cap Value
Opportunity Fund, which returned 18.2 percent.
(Columbia's Mutual Fund Performance)
Some of Columbia's largest holdings include Ametel Inc. (
AME
), Lululemon Athletica Inc. (
LULU
), Donaldson Company Inc. (
DCI
) and Mettler-Toledo International Inc. (
MTD
).
To view more of Columbia Wanger's latest trades, view Stock
Picks. Also view its undervalued stocks, it high-yield companies
and its top growth stocks.
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