Polen Capital Management, a high-conviction growth investment management firm, published its “Polen International Growth Fund” fourth quarter 2020 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 4.79% was recorded by the fund in the fourth quarter of 2020, below its MSCI All Country World benchmark that delivered a 17.02% return in the same period. For the full year of 2020, the Portfolio returned 12.75% versus 10.65% for the Index. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Polen International Growth Fund, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Accenture plc (NYSE: ACN) and emphasized their views on the company. Accenture plc is a Dublin, Ireland-based consulting and processing services provider that currently has a $178.5 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, EDU delivered a 7.32% return, while its 12-month gains are still up by 65.07%. As of March 26, 2021, the stock closed at $280.77 per share.
Here is what Polen International Growth Fund has to say about Accenture plc in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“Ireland-based information technology consulting firm Accenture was a leading contributor to the Portfolio for the year. We think Accenture is a well-oiled machine, enabling its global customer base to better utilize technology. With more than 500,000 employees, Accenture serves clients in many corners of the world. Its deeply embedded client relationships are a source of competitive advantage and can create a connection point that fosters new business opportunities with existing clients. More than 70% of business is solesourced, meaning Accenture is the only bidder on a contract.
Services businesses generate high returns on capital and consistent cash flows. Accenture management thoughtfully allocates the cash produced to shareholder returns via dividends and share repurchases and a steady diet of acquisitions. With a broad range of interests in the tech world, Accenture casts a wide net for acquisition targets, which bring new technology, talent, and client relations to the firm. Targets tend to be small. In 2020, Accenture acquired more than 30 companies. In aggregate, though, these acquisitions do add up and contribute a few percentage points of growth to Accenture’s roughly $45 billion in annual revenue.”
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Our calculations show that Accenture plc (NYSE: ACN) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Accenture plc was in 50 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 46 funds in the third quarter. ACN delivered a 7.95% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
