Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. US Treasury yields saw a significant decline towards the end of 2023, which led to a massive surge in the last two months of the year for US stocks. The fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 9.75%, 9.75%, and 9.79% respectively, in the quarter compared to a 9.50% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2023.
Artisan Value Fund featured stocks like U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in the fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is a financial service holding company. On March 13, 2024, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) stock closed at $43.47 per share. One-month return of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) was 4.62%, and its shares gained 19.55% of their value over the last 52 weeks. U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) has a market capitalization of $67.74 billion.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Banks were well represented among our top Q4 performers as the Treasury market rally drove big gains in the bank stocks. U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), PNC Financial Services (PNC) and Bank of America—the three banks we hold in the portfolio—were each among our top five contributors to return. When bank stocks sold off in Q1 due to fears of contagion following Silicon Valley Bank’s failure, we took advantage of the market dislocation by purchasing top-10 US banks USB and PNC at what were, in our view, cheap prices. USB and PNC are banks we have known for years. They are well managed and well capitalized. As large banks, they were less impacted by the turmoil that affected smaller institutions as depositors sought the safest places to store their money. The recent rebound is an example of how our approach of investing in out-of-favor businesses can lead to alpha. USB and PNC are not immune from industry-wide headwinds from higher deposit costs, pressured net interest margins and fleeing deposits. However, we did not see these banks having a similar level of risk, with respect to uninsured deposits and unrealized losses, which contributed in varying degrees to the collapses of other banks in March 2023. As investors, we cannot avoid risk. However, we are willing to take risk if we are being compensated appropriately.”
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U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. At the end of the fourth quarter, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) was held by 36 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 29 in the previous quarter, according to our database.
We discussed U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in another article and shared the list of best regional bank dividend stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2023 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.
