Artisan Small Cap on BlackLine (BL): “Growth Runway Remains Compelling”

Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Small Cap Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -5.02% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTSX, -4.99% by its Advisor Class: APDSX, and -4.95% by its Institutional Class: APHSX for the fourth quarter of 2020, all below the Russell 2000® Growth Index that delivered a 4.88% return and the Russell 2000® Index that was up by 12.70% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Artisan Small Cap Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ: BL), and shared their insights on the company. BlackLine, Inc. is a California-based software company that currently has a $5.9 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, BL delivered a -23.29% return, while its 12-month gains are up by 53.64%. As of May 17, 2021, the stock closed at $102.31 per share.

Here is what Artisan Small Cap Fund has to say about BlackLine, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

Blackline gave back some of its solid 2020 gains as shares were pressured amid the broader tech selloff. Underlying fundamentals for the business remain on solid footing, and we used the weakness to add to our position. We believe the growth runway remains compelling as its solutions lead to automation, cost savings, enhanced real-time visibility and improved data integrity within the CFO office (accounting/finance departments).”

Software

Our calculations show that BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ: BL) 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, BlackLine, Inc. was in 23 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 17 funds in the third quarter. BL delivered a -20.55% 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.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.