Baron Funds: “Nerdy (NRDY) has a Long Runway for Growth”

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Opportunity Fund” third quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A decline of 2.03% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the third quarter of 2021. For the period, the Fund trailed the Russell 3000 Growth Index, which rose 0.69%, and the S&P 500 Index, which increased 0.58%. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.

Baron Opportunity Fund, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned Nerdy, Inc. (NYSE: NRDY) and discussed its stance on the firm. Nerdy, Inc. is a Fort Worth, Texas-based educational platform with a $520.0 million market capitalization. NRDY delivered a -44.14% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -40.95%. The stock closed at $6.20 per share on December 08, 2021.

Here is what Baron Opportunity Fund has to say about Nerdy, Inc.  in its Q3 2021 investor letter:

Nerdy Inc. operates Varsity Tutors, a leading platform for delivering live online learning. Varsity Tutors has helped over 500,000 students with an average 4.9/5.0 rating (according to its site). Upon signing in, students can take evaluation quizzes so they can be better matched to a personally tailored curriculum that addresses their specific learning needs. Nerdy also provides industry-leading instructors flexible scheduling, so that they may tutor after work hours. This unlocks a highly skilled workforce of professionals, professors, and educators. As a marketplace that operates virtual classes, Nerdy can match the best instructor for a specific student, regardless of where in the U.S. each is located. The offering includes K-12 courses, college, professional, GMAT, SAT, and other prep. Nerdy is experiencing strong growth and momentum in its core one-on-one class offering, small group classes, and professional certificates. We believe Nerdy will continue to innovate and accelerate the launch of new products that will drive incremental growth by reaching new audiences and going deeper with existing learners. For example, Nerdy recently launched an after-school club subscription program. It also launched star courses, where celebrities like Bill Nye can host an open session that attracts new users to the site. This has been a powerful customer acquisition tool. Further, Nerdy should benefit from the recently passed American Rescue Plan, which is set to provide $24 billion to schools to address COVID learning loss. Nerdy has already launched “Varsity Tutors for Schools” which allows state educational agencies and school districts to deliver online tutoring at scale. We believe that Nerdy has a long runway for growth given the vast opportunity ahead.”

Based on our calculations, Nerdy, Inc. (NYSE: NRDY) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. NRDY was in 22 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 0 funds in the previous quarter. Nerdy, Inc. (NYSE: NRDY) delivered a -38.00% return in the past 3 months.

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