Asbury Automotive (ABG) Landed in Black Bear Value Partners’ Big Five

Black Bear Value Partners, an investment management firm, published its first-quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly portfolio return of +1.6% was recorded by the fund for the first quarter of 2022 increasing its year-to-date return to +1.9%. Meanwhile, its benchmarks, the  S&P 500 and HFRI Index delivered a +3.7% and +0.2% returns respectively for the same period. Try to spend some time taking a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to be informed about their best picks for 2022.

In its Q1 2022 investor letter, Black Bear Value Fund mentioned Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 1995, Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG)  is a Duluth, Georgia-based automotive retail company with a $3.5 billion market capitalization. Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG)  delivered a -10.14% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -26.02%. The stock closed at $155.21 per share on April 13, 2022.

Here is what Black Bear Value Fund has to say about Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:

Asbury has many similar qualities to AutoNation, which we held for the last 5+ years. I don’t typically discuss portfolio activity but given the long-holding and likely questions, I figured I’d address the change in our holdings here.

While I admire the AutoNation business there has been a management change and an accompanying change in strategic and capital allocation priorities. It was painful to sell the business as it had been one of our core investments and I believed they were on a great track. Management’s strategy may wind up being successful, but it is different than what I underwrote and as a result a change was needed for our portfolio. I express my thanks to the team at AutoNation as our Partnership has benefited from your stewardship.

Asbury had been in the portfolio before. Entering COVID, I decided to concentrate our auto dealer investments into AutoNation. ABG is run by highly capable management who have made 2 accretive and sizeable acquisitions in the past 18 months. The fundamentals of both businesses are similar though there are some differences of note…” (Click here to see the full text)

Our calculations show that Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) was in 32 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2022, compared to 22 funds in the previous quarter. Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) delivered a -6.91% return in the past 3 months.

Earlier this month, we published an article that includes Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q1 page.

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