TCW funds, an investment management company, released its “TCW Concentrated Large Cap Growth Fund” third-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Equity markets continued their rally in the third quarter, driven by continued optimism around AI investments and positive corporate earnings. Against this backdrop, the fund (I share) returned +4.11% in the quarter compared to +10.51% for the Russell 1000 Growth Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to kn ...

Group 1: Polen International Growth Strategy Performance - The Polen International Growth Strategy returned -4.23% gross and -4.53% net of fees in Q3 2025, underperforming the MSCI ACWI (ex-USA) which gained 6.89% [1] - The strategy's concentrated approach to quality investing did not match the index performance during the quarter [1] Group 2: Shopify Inc. Performance - Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) had a one-month return of -0.33% and a 52-week gain of 39.63%, closing at $158.41 per share with a market capitalization of $206.225 billion on December 08, 2025 [2] - Shopify was the top contributor to both relative and absolute performance in the Polen portfolio for Q3 2025, showcasing strong results with accelerating revenue and gross merchandise volume growth [3] - Shopify's revenue increased by 32% year-over-year in Q3 2025, with 91 hedge fund portfolios holding its stock at the end of the quarter, up from 69 in the previous quarter [4]

Core Insights - The Brown Capital Management International All-Company Fund experienced a loss of 4.46% in Q3 2025, underperforming the MSCI World ex-US Growth-Net Index, which returned 2.84% during the same period [1] - Year-to-date, the fund returned 6.67%, significantly lower than the index's 19.32% return, attributed to company-specific challenges and missing out on high-performing industries [1] Company Highlights - Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) is highlighted as a key stock in the fund's Q3 2025 investor letter, showcasing a one-month return of 1.38% and a substantial 39.72% increase over the last 52 weeks [2] - As of December 5, 2025, Shopify's stock closed at $161.08 per share, with a market capitalization of $209.701 billion [2] - Shopify provides a comprehensive suite of digital commerce solutions, enabling merchants to manage online stores efficiently through features like web design, inventory management, and payment processing [3] - The platform's continuous innovation and user-friendly tools create significant switching costs for merchants, fostering dependency on Shopify's ecosystem for business operations [3]

Core Insights - Worth Buying Technology held an AI progress sharing conference on November 26, showcasing its latest AI developments and the new "Haina" ACP (Agent Commercial Protocol) [1] - The company aims to enhance consumer service capabilities in the AI ecosystem and has partnered with Weimeng and Alipay to integrate AI payment capabilities [1][4] - The "Haina" platform focuses on creating a seamless transaction process in AI e-commerce, establishing a complete closed loop from capability supply to transaction matching [1][4] Group 1: AI Achievements - In November, the "Haina" MCP Server partner count exceeded 40, with an output volume surpassing 100 million [2] - The AI shopping assistant "Zhang Dama" saw an 8-fold increase in active users and a 24% increase in average retention rate [2] - The core product "What Worth Buying" experienced a 4-fold increase in AIGC reading time compared to the same period last year [2] Group 2: AIGC Integration - AIGC capabilities have evolved from simple content generation to decision empowerment, enhancing content production efficiency and user experience [3] Group 3: "Haina" ACP Development - The "Haina" ACP is designed as a foundational technology standard for "dialogue-based shopping," connecting AI capabilities with commercial value [4] - The collaboration with Weimeng and Alipay aims to create a collaborative transaction closed loop involving AI agents, users, merchants, and payment platforms [4][5] - The "Haina" ACP will first be implemented in the "Zhang Dama" app, facilitating a seamless process from dialogue to payment [5] Group 4: Future Strategy - Worth Buying Technology plans to continue its "comprehensive AI" strategy, exploring new AI+ consumption scenarios, models, and products [5] - The company aims to enhance the efficiency and quality of connections between supply and demand, contributing to a better consumer experience [5]

Core Insights - Worth Buying Technology's CTO Wang Yunfeng announced significant advancements in AI, including over 40 partners for the "Haina" MCP Server and an output volume exceeding 1 billion in November [1] - The AI shopping assistant "Zhang Dama" saw an 8-fold increase in active users and a 24% increase in average retention compared to the previous month [1] - The core product "What Worth Buying" experienced a 4-fold increase in AIGC reading time compared to the same period last year [1] Company Developments - In October, Worth Buying Technology formed a strategic partnership with Weimeng to integrate its consumer data service capabilities with Weimeng's SaaS commercial operating system, aiming to create an AI e-commerce transaction closed loop in China [1] - The company plans to further collaborate with Alipay to explore AI payment services, establishing a collaborative transaction closed loop involving AI agents, users, merchants, and payment platforms [1] Technology and Infrastructure - The ACP (Dialogue Commerce Protocol) is introduced as a foundational technology standard that connects AI capabilities with commercial value, expected to create new opportunities in the AI era [1] - The "Haina" ACP will first be implemented in the "Zhang Dama" App, facilitating a seamless process from dialogue to recommendation, ordering, and payment, thereby creating a verifiable sample of AI e-commerce [1]

Group 1 - Commerce.com, Inc. (formerly BigCommerce Holdings, Inc.) announced upcoming investor conference presentations featuring CEO Travis Hess and CFO Daniel Lentz [1] - The presentations will take place at the Raymond James Technology Conference on December 9, 2025, and the Barclays Global Technology Conference on December 11, 2025 [1] - A live webcast of the presentations will be available on the Commerce investor relations website, with replays accessible afterward [1] Group 2 - Commerce empowers businesses through an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem, connecting tools and systems for growth [2] - The company is the parent of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift, enabling businesses to unlock data potential and deliver personalized experiences [2] - Trusted by notable brands such as Coldwater Creek, Cole Haan, and Mizuno, Commerce provides essential tools for businesses to thrive in a multi-surface world [2]

Market Overview - In the third quarter of 2025, the US equity market experienced a rally, with the S&P 500 Index increasing by 8.12% [1] - Bonds also performed well, as indicated by a 2.03% rise in the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index during the same period [1] Performance Analysis - Aristotle Atlantic's Large Cap Growth strategy achieved a gross return of 9.76% and a net return of 9.61%, underperforming the Russell 1000 Growth Index, which returned 10.51% [1] - The relative underperformance of the fund was attributed to security selection during the quarter [1] Company Spotlight: Shopify Inc. - Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) is highlighted as a key stock, providing a cloud-based platform for businesses to start, scale, market, and operate [2][3] - Over the last month, Shopify's stock saw a decline of 11.34%, but it gained 37.93% over the past 52 weeks, closing at $146.04 per share on November 14, 2025, with a market capitalization of $187.593 billion [2] - The company focuses on enhancing the shopping experience for consumers and streamlining operations for merchants through its comprehensive, multi-channel platform [3] - Shopify's business model includes recurring subscription solutions and merchant success-based solutions, supporting millions of merchants across over 175 countries [3] - The platform allows for seamless management of products, sales, and customer relationships across various channels, emphasizing continuous innovation and robust infrastructure [3]

Core Insights - Liquid AI has formed a partnership with Shopify to license and deploy its Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs) for quality-sensitive workflows on Shopify's platform, focusing on enhancing search capabilities with a sub-20ms text model [1][3] - The partnership includes the co-development of a generative recommender system utilizing a novel HSTU architecture, which has shown improved conversion rates in testing compared to previous models [2] Group 1: Partnership Details - The partnership formalizes ongoing co-development efforts and follows Shopify's investment of $250 million in Liquid AI's Series A funding round in December 2024 [1] - The collaboration encompasses a multi-purpose license for LFMs across low-latency, quality-sensitive workloads, ongoing R&D collaboration, and a shared roadmap for future developments [4] Group 2: Model Performance - Liquid's LFMs are designed for sub-20 millisecond, multimodal, quality-preserving inference, outperforming popular open-source models like Qwen3, Gemma3, and Llama 3 with approximately 50% fewer parameters while achieving 2-10 times faster inference [3][4] - The models are tailored for applications in e-commerce, including personalized ranking, retrieval-augmented generation, and session-aware recommendations, ensuring production robustness and low-variance tail latency [4] Group 3: Executive Insights - Liquid AI's CEO emphasized the importance of reliable, efficient, and fast models for decision-making in various sectors, highlighting the partnership with Shopify as a validation of their technology at scale [3] - Shopify's CTO noted the unique capability of Liquid's models to deliver sub-20ms inference on real workloads, which is crucial for powering interactive commerce [4]

Core Insights - Commerce has launched new capabilities for Shopify merchants through Feedonomics applications to enhance data automation and governance [1][2] - The new applications, Feedonomics for Advertising and Feedonomics for Listings & Orders, aim to formalize omnichannel capabilities and simplify operations for merchants [2][3] - These services are designed to improve product discoverability, increase advertising performance, and drive additional revenue for Shopify merchants [3][4] Company Overview - Commerce (Nasdaq: CMRC) provides an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem, connecting various technology solutions to empower businesses [6] - The company is the parent of BigCommerce, Feedonomics, and Makeswift, and is trusted by leading brands such as Coldwater Creek and Cole Haan [6] - Feedonomics specializes in AI-enriched product feed management and intelligent order orchestration, helping businesses optimize their data across multiple channels [7][8] Benefits of Feedonomics Solutions - The new Feedonomics applications offer a unified platform for merchants to manage enriched product data and orders from various sources [4][5] - These solutions help agencies accelerate time-to-launch, automate data transformation workflows, and deliver measurable ROI [5] - Brands using Feedonomics have reported improvements in return on ad spend, reach, and revenue growth [8]

Core Viewpoint - GigaCloud Technology Inc will report its financial results for Q3 and the nine months ended September 30, 2025, on November 6, 2025, after market close, followed by a conference call to discuss the results [1]. Company Overview - GigaCloud Technology Inc is a pioneer in global end-to-end B2B technology solutions for large parcel merchandise, offering a comprehensive B2B ecommerce platform known as the "GigaCloud Marketplace" [3]. - The GigaCloud Marketplace integrates discovery, payments, and logistics tools, connecting manufacturers in Asia with resellers in the U.S., Asia, and Europe for efficient cross-border transactions [3]. - The company launched its marketplace in January 2019, initially focusing on the global furniture market and has since expanded into home appliances and fitness equipment [3].