Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Real Estate Fund” first quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In Q1 2025, stocks were sold due to economic growth slowdown, inflation, and policymaking issues, including Baron Real Estate Fund®, without considering value. The fund declined 6.69% (Institutional Shares) in the quarter compared to a 3.11% decline for the MSCI USA IMI Extended Real Estate Index (the MSCI Real Estate Index) and a 0.76% gain for the MSCI US REIT Index (the REIT Index). In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its first-quarter 2025 investor letter, Baron Real Estate Fund highlighted stocks such as CRH plc (NYSE:CRH). Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) is a building materials manufacturer and distributor. The one-month return of CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) was 15.01%, and its shares gained 17.60% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 14, 2025, CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) stock closed at $97.47 per share with a market capitalization of $65.82 billion.
Baron Real Estate Fund stated the following regarding CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) is the largest building materials company in both North America and Europe and supplies products for construction and infrastructure projects such as roads, highways, bridges, and commercial and residential buildings. Its products include materials such as aggregates, cement, asphalt, and concrete, as well as critical utility infrastructure and outdoor living solutions.
CRH is currently trading at 8.7 times 2025 estimated cash flow, while vertically integrated construction materials peers, who are not as big as CRH and do not have the same track record of consistent performance, have traded as high as 13 times cash flow. Aggregates focused peers with similar construction project exposure trade at approximately 16 times cash flow.”
A construction worker wearing a hard hat and safety glasses at a site, carrying concrete blocks.
CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 90 hedge fund portfolios held CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 80 in the previous quarter. In Q1 2025, CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) reported $6.8 billion in revenues, up 3% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the undervalued AI stock set for massive gains.
In another article, we covered CRH plc (NYSE:CRH) and shared billionaire Seth Klarman’s stock picks with huge upside potential. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
