Raspberry Pi

 I've just put a small amount of money into Raspberry Pi.  They'll make up about 2.2% of my portfolio.

Things I like about them:

• They've steered the ship well for the last 12 years, iterating their core Single Board Computer (SBC) product, making money, growing sales.
• They've developed beyond the education & enthusiast market into OEM sales and now microprocessors.
• They can achieve decent margin, because:
• They have a strong brand, particularly due to the connection with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
• Their products have a reputation for quality and longevity.
• There's a great ecosystem around the product thanks to a lot of hobbyists contributing to open source projects.
• The engineers tinkering with these things in their spare time introduce them to their professional lives - so the hobbyist market drives OEM adoption.  I expect the same will be true (though with a much longer lead-time) of the education market, where engineers who played with these at school/Uni eventually turn into the decision-makers of the future.  They've been around since 2012, so this should be starting to happen now/soon.

Things I'm not so keen on:

• They're expensive, on a P/E ratio of around 30.
• A decent chunk of that profit is actually capitalized development expenses - yuck.
• They're heavily dependent on a few other companies: Broadcom who design most of the chips they use, TSMC who manufacture them, and Sony who manufacture the Raspberry Pi itself (in a single facility in South Wales).