Baron Funds Expects Continued Share Appreciation as AstraZeneca (AZN)’s Financials Compound

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Health Care Fund” first quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. In the quarter ended March 31, 2022, Baron Health Care Fund (the “Fund”) declined 9.93% (Institutional Shares), compared with the 4.56% decline for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index (the “Benchmark”) and the 4.60% decline for the S&P 500 Index. 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, Baron Health Care Fund mentioned AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 1999, AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) is a Cambridge, United Kingdom-based multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with a $189.7 billion market capitalization. AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) delivered a 3.02% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 2.13%. The stock closed at $60.01 per share on June 13, 2022.

Here is what Baron Health Care Fund has to say about AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:

“AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) is a pharmaceutical company developing products across a range of indications including oncology, cardiovascular, and respiratory. AstraZeneca is widely recognized as having the best top-line and bottom- line growth profiles in the pharmaceutical space without a discernable patent cliff this decade. Given consistent new product outperformance (Calquence and Enhertu are recent examples), we expect continued share appreciation as AstraZeneca’s financials compound.”

Photo by Steven Cornfield on Unsplash

Our calculations show that AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) was in 45 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2022, compared to 42 funds in the previous quarter. AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) delivered a -0.63% return in the past 3 months.

In February 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN) 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.