Baron Partners Fund on IDEXX Lab. (IDXX): “Margins can Exceed 30% Over Time”

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Partners Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A decline of 0.38% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the Q1 of 2021, while the Index declined 0.57% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Baron Partners Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDXX), and shared their insights on the company. IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. is a Westbrook, Maine-based veterinary diagnostics, software, and water microbiology testing provider that currently has a $44.1 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, IDXX delivered a 3.75% return, extending its 12-month gains to 75.81%. As of May 12, 2021, the stock closed at $512.31 per share.

Here is what Baron Partners Fund has to say about IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“Shares of veterinary diagnostics leader IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. detracted from performance in the quarter as part of a broader rotation away from high-multiple growth stocks. Veterinary visits continued to increase, with practice revenue growing at double-digit rates. IDEXX’s competitive trends are outstanding, and we expect new proprietary innovations and field sales force expansion to be meaningful contributors to growth. Margins are moving significantly higher, and we believe that margins can exceed 30% over time.”

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Our calculations show that IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDXX) 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, IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. was in 46 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 41 funds in the third quarter. IDXX delivered a -1.80% 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.

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