By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Okay, and so what’s the mix of technology in your portfolio when when you are kind of enacting a defensive strategy because of a certain threshold of uncertainty that we’ve clearly seen struck within the markets at this juncture of the year?
00:20 Speaker B
So yeah, it depends on what what exactly you consider technology because you know, our Meta and and Alphabet are those are those media companies or are those technology companies? But I think if we take, you know, technology into kind of the subsectors, um we’re starting to get a little bit more constructive on on a subsector like software as an example, particularly some of the more defensive areas within software like back office software, um stuff that’s harder to rip out. Um so I think that’s that’s a much more defensive area of tech. Semiconductors, I think there’s there’s a range there. There’s cyclical sort of more analog semiconductors where think more cautious there, but some of the AI semis, again, some of these stocks have taken a lot of pain year to date. And I think a lot of the fundamentals there remain pretty strong. So we’re we’re cautiously optimistic on on some of those names and we’re sticking with those despite what’s been a challenging year so far. And then yeah, go ahead.
02:00 Speaker A
Sorry, I’ll allow you to finish real quick.
02:10 Speaker B
No, I was just going to say then outside of semis and software, you have a whole other range of, you know, e-commerce being another vertical within tech. And and I think that’s just that’s also a more cyclical subsector, but within that space, you know, we we do still like Amazon as an example.
02:45 Speaker A
Okay, so within that, I guess what you’re starting to get at to here is the the difference between some of the core business to business technology names that typically promote some higher margins that sell into their existing portfolio base and then also look to gain new customers and subscribers either on a license basis or on just kind of a block purchase basis versus those that are more business to consumer that rely on their advertising sales to really kind of buoy their own margin model as well. You know, as you’re kind of looking across those two different sides of technology and of course, some of them like Amazon and Microsoft overlap, where is there more strength from your own evaluation?
04:05 Speaker B
Right. So the question is kind of looking at consumer tech versus B2B tech where what do we like more right now? Now, I think it’s it’s this is maybe a cop out answer, but it is a little hard to generalize there, but I think we would generally gravitate towards more B2B type platforms in the current environment, but within that, I think you have to figure out which areas are going to be the early, the the first to be pulled back in in a if if IT spending pulls back and versus which are the, you know, more the the the harder to rip out solutions that are being provided. Um so, you know, I I think very defensive kind of back office software, a company like Intuit we still really like in this environment. Um you know, we like some of those ideas versus just using as an example, we don’t own Salesforce, but Salesforce we think would be a little bit more prone to IT spend pulling back in this environment. So it’s it’s hard to generalize, but and then just as to to tie the to to tie the bow there, I mean, I think one thing we’re hearing very consistently from IT executives and from different channel checks that we do before earnings, again, AI is a remains very, very high priority. I think companies are very reluctant to pull back spend on AI solutions. So I think that’s doesn’t really fit either these buckets that we’ve been talking about cleanly, but I think it’s an area that for various reasons is very high priority. It’s going to be harder for companies to pull back a lot of that spend.