Better Days in Line for ICF International (ICFI) Says Third Avenue Management

Third Avenue Management, a disciplined, value-oriented asset manager and investment fund, published its ‘Small-Cap Value Fund’ third-quarter 2020 Investor Letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 11.41% was recorded by the fund for the 3rd Quarter of 2020, below its Russell 2000 Value benchmark that returned 18.91%. You can view the fund’s top 10 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Third Avenue Management in their Small-Cap Value Fund’s Q3 2020 Investor Letter said that they continue to see better things ahead for ICF International, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICFI) and so they maintained their position in the company. ICF International, Inc. is a global consulting and technology services company that currently has a $1.5 billion market cap. For the past 3 months, ICF International, Inc. delivered a 17.16% return and settled at $79.73 per share at the closing of January 15th.

Here is what Third Avenue Management has to say about ICF International, Inc. in their Investor Letter:

“The Fund is invested in a handful of companies that could be direct beneficiaries of infrastructure spending and ICF International (“ICF”) is a longtime Fund holding with more than half its revenues derived from federal, state, and local governments. More than forty percent of ICF’s revenues are earned providing services to improve energy efficiency and address environmental concerns and infrastructure initiatives. A good portion of this comes directly from the Department of Health & Human Services, where ICF advises on areas such as expanding health care to underserved populations, expanding awareness to prevent the spread of disease, and improving efficiencies in the health care system. Given the events of 2020, these programs are likely candidates for funding in future government spending packages.”

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Last December 2020, we published an article telling that ICF International, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICFI) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolio. Its all time high statistics is 17. ICF International, Inc. delivered a 7.26% return YTD.

As of September 2020, Third Avenue Management had an 83K share position in ICFI that amounted to $5 million. This made Third Avenue Management as the top 2 hedge fund that holds most of ICFI’s stake, just below Marshall Wace LLP with $5.7 million worth of ICFI shares. However, our calculations showed that ICF International, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICFI) does not belong to the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 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. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds

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