Here’s How ICON plc (ICLR) Recovered from Challenges

Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its third-quarter 2025 “Polen International Growth Strategy” investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The strategy returned -4.23% gross and -4.53% net of fees in the quarter, compared to the MSCI ACWI’s (ex-USA) 6.89% gain. The strategy’s concentrated approach to quality investing failed to match the index in the quarter. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2025.

In its third-quarter 2025 investor letter, Polen International Growth Strategy 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 11.43%, and its shares lost 15.68% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 08, 2025, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $182.10 per share, with a market capitalization of $14.162 billion.

Polen International Growth Strategy stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its third quarter 2025 investor letter:

“The top three contributors to the Portfolio’s relative and absolute performance in the quarter were Shopify, ASML, and ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR). ICON plc, the world’s largest contract research organization, delivered top and bottom-line results that exceeded expectations. Improving bookings growth pointed to stabilization and potentially recovery after a challenging past 12 months— a period in its customer base tightened R&D outlays. We added to our position as we believe the cyclical slowdown in healthcare could be ending and that ICON is poised to return to steady, low double digit EPS growth. To us, ICON remains a best-in-class operator in an essential category, and we view trailing twelve months’ share price movements as disconnected with fundamental performance.”

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

ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 43 hedge fund portfolios held ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) at the end of the third quarter, which was 42 in the previous quarter. ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) reported revenue of $2.043 billion in Q3 2025, representing a year-on-year increase of 0.6%. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ: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 ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ: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 the list of cheap healthcare stocks to buy heading into 2026. 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.