Conestoga Capital Advisors, a boutique, independent investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2020 ‘Small Cap Growth & SMid Cap Growth’ Investor Letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A net return of 31% was recorded by Conestoga’s Small Cap Growth fund and 19.72% return by its SMid Cap Growth Fund for the the end year 2020. Both performed below their Russell 2000 Growth and Russell 2500 Growth benchmarks that delivered a 34.63% and 25.89% return respectively. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Conestoga Capital Advisors, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, emphasized that National Research Corporation (NASDAQ: NRC) is among their Small Cap Growth Fund’s top 5 laggards. National Research Corporation is a Nebraska-based company that collects large volumes of healthcare consumer data, products and subscription-based solutions. It currently has a $1.3 billion market capitalization. In the past month, NRC is up 4.95%, extending its YTD gains to 23.44%. As of March 5, the stock closed at $52.77 per share.
Here is what Conestoga Capital Advisors has to say about National Research Corporation in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“NRC underperformed during the fourth quarter of 2020, declining by over 10%. The stock fell on little news during the period, moving higher after a decent earnings report but falling midway through November into year-end. The stock is on the lower end of trading liquidity within our portfolio and the decline may have been triggered by other investors’ need to exit or reduce their position. We continue to maintain our NRC holding in Conestoga portfolios.”
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Our calculations show that National Research Corporation (NASDAQ: NRC) 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, National Research Corporation was in 12 hedge fund portfolios compared to 6 funds in the third quarter. NRC delivered a 5.54% 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.
