We recently published a list of Billionaire Louis Bacon’s 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) stands against other stock picks with huge upside potential.
Louis Moore Bacon is the founder, Chairman, and principal investment manager of Moore Capital Management, a global investment management firm that provides services to institutional and high-net-worth clients through diversified hedge funds and specialized funds that focus on global fixed-income and emerging markets. It was established in March 1989 and is headquartered in New York City with offices in London and Hong Kong. He holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and a BA in American Literature from Middlebury College. Bacon’s investment philosophy is based on risk management and capital preservation principles. His trading strategies are focused on macroeconomic trends and fundamental analysis of the markets.
Bacon emphasizes diversification, which allows him to invest across different geographies and asset classes. He is known for his contrarian investment style and takes positions against prevailing market sentiment. Moore Capital Management is a hedge fund with 4 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $33.20 billion, as reported in the firm’s Form ADV dated 19 November 2024. Their last reported 13F filing for Q4 2024 included $8.70 billion in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 25.53%. He believes that there are opportunities to profit from mispricing that come with volatility or fear. Louis Moore Bacon is also the Founder and Co-Chair of The Moore Charitable Foundation, which was established in 1992 to support conservation-focused nonprofits dedicated to preserving land, water, and wildlife habitats. Bacon has received several awards in this regard, including the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award and the Audubon Medal.
Our Methodology
To compile the list of billionaire Louis Bacon’s 10 stock picks with huge upside potential, we sifted through Q4 2024 13F filings of Moore Global Investments from Insider Monkey. From these filings, we checked each stock’s upside potential from CNN and ranked the stocks in ascending order of this upside potential. We have also added Moore Global Investments’ stake in each company and the hedge fund sentiment around each stock.
Note: All data was sourced on May 2.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A technician in a clean room assembling a semiconductor chip using a microscope.
Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT)
Moore Global Investments’ Stake: $48.79 million
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 80
Average Upside Potential as of May 2: 37.62%
Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) provides manufacturing equipment and services. It also offers software to the semiconductor, display, and related industries. The company operates through three segments: Semiconductor Systems, Applied Global Services, and Display. It operates in the US, China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and internationally.
In Q1 2025, the company’s Semiconductor Systems segment generated $5.36 billion in sales, which marked a 9% year-over-year increase. This was fueled by a 20% surge in foundry logic sales, which benefit from the industry’s transition to advanced nodes like gate-all-around transistors and backside power delivery. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) estimates that this transition alone expands the company’s total available market by over 15%.
For Q2 2025, the company projects Semiconductor Systems revenue to be ~$5.3 billion, with an 8% growth year-over-year. Jefferies analysts recently upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold with a $195 price target, up from the previous target of $185. This upgrade was backed by recovering demand, which can help the company’s stock to continue to rise despite the US-China trade tensions.
Vltava Fund viewed the company as a strong tech company with excellent profitability, cash flow, and growth potential, and stated the following regarding Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“In the quarter just ended, we added to the portfolio two new companies from the technology sector: Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) and Lam Research. Both are in the same industry as is another of our investments that we have held for some time, KLA Corporation. This industry is termed semiconductor devices and materials. One chapter in Hidden Investment Treasures is devoted to investing in technology companies and, among other things, the controversy over what really constitutes a technology company. As investors, we try to view technology companies not according to the industry into which they are formally classified but by whether the technologies and technological processes used in the production of their products and services are an essential element in value creation or if they are a source of long-term, sustainable competitive advantage. Among the companies that are formally categorized as technology-based and fall into either the Information Technology or the Communications Services sector, we find some that can be said to be just that but also others for which this classification is at least debatable. Similarly, among companies that do not formally belong to these two sectors, we find many that clearly are built to a large extent on technology and base their market positions and competitiveness on it. In the cases of Applied Materials and Lam Research, there can be no doubt that these are technology companies not only as a formality but also in fact.
Applied Materials provides manufacturing equipment, services, and software for the semiconductor, display, and related industries. Its principal business activities are semiconductor systems and Applied Global Services. Its largest customers are Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductors, but its overall clientele is more diversified than is that of Lam Research. At first glance, it would appear that Applied Materials has a somewhat less tangible and definable competitive advantage compared to KLA Corporation and Lam Research, but the numbers do not support such a view. Net margins likewise in the neighborhood of 27% and ROCE around 30% are outstanding. Basically, it can be said that all three companies we own have very similar underlying profitability metrics. Even their valuations, growth, and potential are similar. All have strong free cash flow and strong balance sheets, and they are regularly buying back their own shares over the long term and in large volumes…” (Click here to read the full text)
Overall, AMAT ranks 3rd on our list of billionaire Louis Bacon’s stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of AMAT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMAT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
