Future Stocks: Our best disruptive ideas

Bill Chater: The technologies available, that’s the broadest it’s ever been. Think of solar panels, batteries, semiconductors. It’s making it easier for companies to access these, to experiment with them, to create new products and services that can go on to transform end markets, and consumer expectations along with it. And that’s why we think this approach is more valid now than it’s ever been.

Alnylam

So, when a company is based on a piece of science which has won the Nobel Prize, that’s a pretty good indication it’s doing something special. That was the case with Alnylam, a biotech business who has a singular approach to gene silencing. This is the most potent and powerful drug-discovery engine in the industry. You’re looking at treatments for Alzheimer’s, hypertension, diabetes, cardiometabolic disorders. Success here would be transformational not just for Alnylam, not just for its investors, but for all of those patients who need better treatments in these areas.

Axon

In 1993, two of Rick Smith’s friends and classmates were shot and killed in a police incident. He went on to go and found Axon and made its corporate mission to protect life and make the bullet obsolete. Now, it’s perhaps best known by its originally eponymous product, the taser, but alongside that it has a growing and increasingly important business in the provision of smart sensors, bodycams and software for the collection, interpretation and storage of evidence. The combination of class-leading innovative hardware and interoperable software, once it’s in place, very hard for rivals to steal a march on it. And it can generate recurring, attractive cash flows from that model. 

SpaceX

Imagine humanity as a multi-planetary species. Sounds like science fiction, right? But that’s the mission of SpaceX, the private space technology and satellite communications company. The ability to reuse its rockets, that has led to a profound and important cost advantage compared to rivals. Alongside that, the satellite constellation Starlink, which is live now in 70 countries with 2.5 million subscribers. The next big unlock will be Starship. This is the rocket which is going to go to the moon. It’s going to go to Mars. Maybe even beyond. It’s going to open a variety of use cases. It’s really going to transform things.

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