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Aragon’s Dias Seeks Firms That Can Double Their Earnings

Aragon’s Dias Seeks Firms That Can Double Earnings in Four Years

Hedge fund veteran Anne Dias is seeking companies that can double their earnings within four years.

Such firms will increase profits “by riding a wave of innovation and dislocation,” Dias, founder and chief executive officer of Aragon Global Management, said Thursday in a Bloomberg Television interview. “With cloud and AI and digitization, that’s reshuffling the decks in every industry. There are going to be winners, there are going to be losers. We’re trying to find the winners.”

Bill.com is among companies that fit Dias’s investment profile, she said. Founded by fintech entrepreneur Rene Lacerte, the firm digitizes accounting for small and medium-sized companies and will experience “tremendous growth,” Dias said. She also pointed to Sixt, an app-focused car-rental company based in Germany, as another example of a company poised for growth amid a digital transformation. 

Aragon’s Dias Seeks Firms That Can Double Their Earnings

Dias said she seeks companies that are following a “blueprint for success” that already exist in other markets. E-commerce platform firm Mirakl can be successful, for example, because it targets a middle market between Shopify Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., she said. And Zooplus AG, an online pet-supply retailer in Europe that’s on the verge of going private, has taken a page from the U.S. company Chewy Inc.’s play book, she said.

“The fact that public-market investors are also aggressively investing in private investments is because thematically they’re the same,” Dias said.

Dias, a native of France, said she is starting to see positive changes to Europe’s business climate, long hurt by fragmentation in languages and regulations. The continent is now being helped by technological advancements, she said.

“It took a pandemic and a divorce -- Brexit -- to have Europe come into its own,” Dias said. “And I think there’s a moment -- a digital moment -- happening right now.”

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