Investment management company Vulcan Value Partners recently released its first-quarter 2026 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The firm focuses on improving long-term returns and lowering risk, rather than short-term results. In the quarter, the Large Cap Composite (Net) returned -14.1%, the Small Cap Composite (Net) returned -6.8%, the Focus Composite (Net) returned -19.1%, the Focus Plus Composite (Net) returned -19.1% as well as the All-Cap Composite (Net) returned -13.5%. Throughout 2025 and escalating to the first quarter of 2026, the market is experiencing heightened volatility related to AI’s potential, leading to mispricing of some strong companies. The current market turbulence presents opportunities for long-term investors willing to accept short-term volatility in stable-valued companies and improve the margin of safety. The letter identified businesses into three groups with perceived /real AI disruption risk: Software, Alternative Asset Managers, and indirectly impacted businesses. The firm highlights that its investment strategy aims to leverage this volatility to reduce risk and increase returns in the long term. In addition, please check the Firm’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2026.
In its first-quarter 2026 investor letter, Vulcan Value Partners highlighted stocks like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a multinational technology and retail company known for its leading online marketplace and cloud platform. On April 22, 2026, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) closed at $255.36 per share. One-month return of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was 23.04%, and its shares gained 36.89% over the past 52 weeks. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has a market capitalization of $2.75 trillion.
Vulcan Value Partners stated the following regarding Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“There were seven material detractors to performance: Ares Management Corporation, Ryan Specialty Holdings, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Salesforce, Inc., UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), and SAP SE. Amazon reported strong results for its fiscal year and fourth quarter. During the fourth quarter, AWS’s revenue increased 24% and highly profitable advertising revenue grew 22%. AWS is benefitting from AI driven demand for its cloud services and its growth is accelerating. In addition, Amazon is aggressively building out its promising Leo satellite service that will compete with Starlink. As a result, Amazon’s capital spending is forecast to increase over 50% in 2026 to approximately $200 billion. We expect a solid return on this capital spending. Bears believe that Amazon is investing too much money in capital spending. Our view is that it is a darn good problem to have and that Amazon will become even more competitively entrenched as the leading cloud services provider in the world.”
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is in top position on our list of 40 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. According to our database, 381 hedge fund portfolios held Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of the fourth quarter, up from 332 in the previous quarter. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) delivered $213.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, an increase of 12% year over year, excluding the impact from foreign exchange rates. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and shared the list of AI stocks in focus on Wall Street. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2026 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
