But there are opportunities growing where few are looking. With discounts of 50 to 75 per cent from previous highs not uncommon, lots of small-cap Canadian tech companies are priced to sell.
Many of them may just be waiting for interest rates to stabilize. The sharp upturn in rates has been the key catalyst in bringing about the worst selloff to hit the Canadian tech sector since the global financial crisis nearly 15 years ago. “We used to get so much pressure from clients saying, ‘you guys aren’t tech enough,’ ” said Bryden Teich, a partner and portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management.
The paltry valuations the market is assigning to smaller Canadian software names tell a similar story. The same RBC report pointed to “unjustifiably discounted” valuations across its top picks in the sector, including Copperleaf Technologies Inc., Coveo Solutions Inc. and D2L Corp. Those three names are trading at an average discount of 42 per cent compared with the average across Canadian peers.
There is certainly a lot of money on the sidelines. Private equity has stockpiled about US$800-billion of dry powder, according to figures from investment data company Preqin.