Brown Capital Management, an investment management company, released its “The Brown Capital Management Small Company Fund” fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The Small Company Fund returned 8.74%, underperforming the Russell 2000 Growth index’s 12.75% return. The fund returned 19.12% for the calendar year 2023 underperforming 18.66% return for the benchmark. In addition, check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.

The Brown Capital Management Small Company Fund featured stocks like Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) in the fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in New York, New York, Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) is a software company that provides a monitoring and analytics platform for developers. On March 6, 2024, Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) stock closed at $124.59 per share. One-month return of Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) was -5.22%, and its shares gained 78.21% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) has a market capitalization of $41.348 billion.

The Brown Capital Management Small Company Fund stated the following regarding Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:

"We recognize that EGCs do not grow in straight lines. They stumble and sometimes fall. But they also have inflection points that lead to step functions of growth and profitability. We have been well-served by staying invested during tough periods. In fact, our patience and tolerance often allow us to participate in significant upside when our long-term thesis materializes.

For example, Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) is an EGC that has experienced stock price declines driven by near-term challenges. Datadog is a leading SaaS-based IT-monitoring and analytics platform that automates the real-time monitoring of infrastructure, application performance and networks. This enables Datadog’s customers to quickly identify and address performance issues in their networks. While competitors only provide a siloed view of cloud infrastructure, applications, logs or networks, Datadog is differentiated by providing a unified view across all these areas via a visual interface configured to the needs of individual users. The technology saves time, money and headaches by driving collaboration among development, operations and business teams; accelerating time-to-market of new software; reducing the time needed to resolve problems; improving infrastructure efficiency; and enabling a better understanding of customer behavior..." (Click here to read the full text)