Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Mid Cap Value Fund” third-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the quarter, the fund’s Investor Class fund ARTQX returned 0.97%, Advisor Class fund APDQX posted a return of 0.98%, and Institutional Class fund APHQX returned 0.97%, compared to a 6.18% return for the Russell Midcap Value Index. Equity markets continued their rally in the third quarter as investors overlooked tariff concerns, driven by strong corporate earnings, rising AI capital expenditures, and hopes for economic support from US fiscal policy and lower interest rates. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its third-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Mid Cap Value Fund highlighted stocks such as ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR). Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is a clinical research organization that offers outsourced development and commercialization services. The one-month return for ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) was 3.61%, and its shares lost 12.45% over the last 52 weeks. On January 2, 2026, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $188.67 per share, with a market capitalization of $14.673 billion.
Artisan Mid Cap Value Fund stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its third quarter 2025 investor letter:
“ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is the second-largest global contract research organization (CRO), providing outsourced clinical development services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Few areas of the US equity market have been weaker over the past year than life sciences, pharma, and biotech, but positive earnings reports in July from ICON and other CROs, which lifted CROs’ share prices, indicate biopharma demand may be bottoming. The biopharma funding environment has remained challenged in recent years due in part to higher interest rates, while broader macroeconomic uncertainty is contributing to a weaker demand environment characterized by cautious decision making among pharma and biotech. The current backdrop has created the opportunity to continue to build our position in ICON—a stock we initially purchased in November 2024. While the outlook remains cloudy, over the longer term, we expect ICON to generate mid- to high-single-digit revenue growth in a normalized environment and continue to gain market share in a fragmented industry. We also believe free cash flow growth can be enhanced by working capital optimization and debt paydown. In the meantime, the risk/reward looks attractive as ICON trades near its cheapest levels since the 2008–2009 global financial crisis at just 13X forward earnings.”
ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 43 hedge fund portfolios held ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) at the end of the third quarter, which was 42 in the previous quarter. ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) reported revenue of $2.043 billion in Q3 2025, representing a year-on-year increase of 0.6%. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) 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 ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) and shared GreensKeeper Asset Management’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2025 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.
