Do You Believe in the Upside Potential of ICON PLC (ICLR)?

Oakmark Funds, advised by Harris Associates, released its “Oakmark Equity and Income Fund” Q2 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The equity portfolio returned 4.67% in the second quarter compared to 10.94% for the S&P 500 Index. An underweight in technology stocks and an overweight in value and mid-cap stocks led to the underperformance of the fund. The fixed income portfolio returned 1.97% compared to 1.21% for the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2025.

In its second quarter 2025 investor letter, Oakmark Equity and Income Fund highlighted stocks such as ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR). Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is a clinical research organization.  The one-month return of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) was 1.69%, and its shares lost 56.13% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 14, 2025, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $149.52 per share with a market capitalization of $11.884 billion.

Oakmark Equity and Income Fund stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

“ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is the second-largest contract research organization (CRO) and the leading pure play company in the industry behind IQVIA Holdings. CROs provide clinical trial outsourcing and associated services to large biopharma companies. Stock prices in the sector have declined amidst uncertainty related to government policy and drug pricing pressure, which have weighed on biopharma R&D spending. We believe biopharma R&D spending will ultimately recover and the historical trend toward outsourcing will continue, leading to a reacceleration in earnings growth at top CROs like ICON. We were pleased to purchase shares in ICON at roughly 11x earnings, near its lowest multiple in history.”

ICON Public Limited Company (ICLR): Among Small-Cap Healthcare Stocks Hedge Funds is Buying

A laboratory setting with a team of scientists working on a clinical trial.

ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 44 hedge fund portfolios held ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) at the end of the first quarter, which was 46 in the previous quarter. ICON Public Limited Company’s (NASDAQ:ICLR) first quarter revenue declined 4.3% year-over-year to $2 billion. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of ICLR as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ICLR and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

In another article, we covered ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) and shared ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.