The Millennial fund manager who pounded the table on Afterpay /...

The Millennial fund manager who pounded the table on Afterpay / https://bit.ly/3CqP2di

As a rising star within Firetrail Investment Management, Eleanor Swanson was instrumental in getting the firm to back Afterpay when it was trading at just $20, winning over the senior investment managers.

Very few fund managers would be able to offer better insights into the customer bases of stocks Adore Beauty and Afterpay like Firetrail Investment Management’s Eleanor Swanson.

As a rising star within Firetrail’s small companies team, she has a sharp insight into how the younger generation think, act and spend differently.

She was central to the firm’s success in backing Afterpay, with her determination the stock was worth backing winning over senior fund managers.

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She sits on the investment team of the firm’s small companies fund, which made a return of 56.44 per cent in the 12 months to October 31, an excess return above benchmark of 25.42 per cent.

“I love the alpha potential in small caps,” she says. “The large cap guys get excited if they’ve got 30 per cent upside in the stock, whereas we would get excited if there’s 200 or 300 per cent upside.”

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Finding an edge in health

Her background studying immunology has been a boon to her analyst career, giving her a unique ability to provide an insight to the medical technology sector.

When asked about the fund’s investments in Telix Pharmaceuticals and Aroa Biosurgery, she’s quick to descend into technical medical jargon even the most seasoned fund manager would struggle to keep up with.

“With Telix, they’re trying to diagnose the cancer through imaging through PET scans or SPECT imaging,” she says.

“They’ll actually take a radioisotope and bind it to an antibody injected into you, and that antibody will bind specifically to the antigen, so when you’re imaging the patient, it just lights up the tumour.”

Firetrail was also a pre-IPO investor in Aroa Biosurgery, which is up 50 per cent since listing in July 2020.

Getting in early

The firm isn’t afraid to play around in the IPO and pre-IPO market, making some big early wins from a number of recent floats.

“We’re very active in that part of the market and there’s so many opportunities, particularly at the moment,” she says.