Cooper Investors Remains Optimistic in IQVIA Holdings (IQV)

Cooper Investors, an investment management firm, published its “Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund (Hedged)” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. For the 3 months and 12 months to December 31st, the Fund returned +6.0% and +23.6% respectively. This compares to the benchmark which returned +6.6% and +20.2%. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

Cooper Investors, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE: IQV) and discussed its stance on the firm. IQVIA Holdings Inc. is a Durham, North Carolina-based medical technology solutions and contract research services provider with a $47.2 billion market capitalization. IQV delivered a -12.33% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 31.71%. The stock closed at $247.34 per share on January 14, 2022.

Here is what Cooper Investors has to say about IQVIA Holdings Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“During the quarter, IQVIA held an Investor Relations day. Today IQVIA is a leading provider of technology solutions and clinical research services to the life science industry. The portfolio first invested in the IQVIA predecessor IMS Health in late 2015. IMS Health was taken private by private equity in 2010 and re-listed in 2014. Current CEO Ari Bousbib, a former executive at United Technologies was appointed CEO at its privatisation and has been the driving force ever since.

Under Ari’s watch IMS first transformed itself from a drug prescription data business to a broader pharmaceutical services provider and then in 2016 merged with Quintiles, the leading Contract Research Organisation (CRO), a business that runs drug trials for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. This merger created the IQVIA we know today. While this was a merger on the surface it was anything but as IMS effectively took control of Quintiles with no premium paid, another in the long line of savvy moves made by Ari and the team.

Along the journey IQVIA management have consistently increased growth rates and expanded the opportunity set for the company. This is a highly commercial team that has built or sought out great quality businesses in attractive and growing life science markets. IMS was an ex-growth business in 2010 and by the time of the Quintiles merger had accelerated to low-to-mid single digits. With the addition of Quintiles and improvement across all aspects of the business revenue growth has been averaging high-single-digits.

At the IR day management now talked to a double-digit revenue growth opportunity. Their markets are growing as fast as they have ever been as more capital flows into biotech and life sciences development. While we have owned the shares for over six years the business outlook today is the strongest we’ve ever seen it and IQVIA remains a core position.”

Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com

Our calculations show that IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE: IQV) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. IQV was in 66 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 69 funds in the previous quarter. IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE: IQV) delivered a -0.61% return in the past 3 months.

You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.

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