Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” third-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The equity market rally persisted in the third quarter as investors ignored tariffs, buoyed by strong corporate earnings, rising AI investment, and prospects of economic support from US fiscal policy and lower interest rates. Against this backdrop, the fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 0.83%, 0.91%, and 0.90%, respectively, in the third quarter compared to a 5.33% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2025.
In its third-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks such as Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX). Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) designs, manufactures, and services semiconductor processing equipment. The one-month return of Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) was 15.04%, and its shares gained 146.81% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 26, 2025, Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) stock closed at $178.07 per share, with a market capitalization of $224.552 billion.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) in its third quarter 2025 investor letter:
“On the positive side, the three new purchases we made in Q2 during the post-Liberation Day market meltdown—Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX), ASML and ThermoFisher Scientific—were each among our top contributors to returns in Q3. Lam and ASML are semiconductor equipment companies, and Thermo Fisher is a life science tools and clinical research company. As value investors, conditions of fear and uncertainty are fertile ground for creating attractive long-term buying opportunities. Few areas of the market were under greater pressure to start the year than semiconductors & semiconductor equipment stocks. We had been researching Lam since 2023, so we knew the company well and were able to act quickly when the stock plunged. At our initial purchase, Lam was selling for ~$60, almost 50% below its July 2024 highs. Lam is one of the key global suppliers of chip equipment serving the memory (NAND and DRAM) and foundry/logic markets. The financial condition is rock solid as it has a net cash balance sheet, and the company returns 100% of earnings to shareholders via share repurchases and dividends. Shares were selling for a 17X P/E on cyclically depressed earnings at the time of initial purchase, which we believed was an attractive valuation given the compounding nature of the business.”
Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. According to our database, 93 hedge fund portfolios held Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) at the end of the third quarter, up from 85 in the previous quarter. In the September quarter, Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) reported revenue of $5.3 billion, representing an increase of 3% from prior quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) 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 Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) and shared the list of best performing S&P 500 stocks in 2025. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.
