Here’s Why Artisan Partners Disposed its BWX Technologies (BWXT) Position

Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Small Cap Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -5.02% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTSX, -4.99% by its Advisor Class: APDSX, and -4.95% by its Institutional Class: APHSX for the fourth quarter of 2020, all below the Russell 2000® Growth Index that delivered a 4.88% return and the Russell 2000® Index that was up by 12.70% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Artisan Small Cap Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT), and shared their insights on the company. BWX Technologies, Inc. is a Lynchburg, Virginia-based nuclear components and fuel supplier that currently has a $6  billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, BWXT delivered a 4.89% return, extending its 12-month gains to 10.12%. As of May 17, 2021, the stock closed at $64.23 per share.

Here is what Artisan Small Cap Fund has to say about BWX Technologies, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“We exited positions in BWX Technologies. BWX Technologies is the dominant provider of nuclear reactors to the US Navy and a leading supplier of components and services to the commercial nuclear power industry. Throughout our campaign, the company has reported several meaningful headwinds, including production challenges with missile tubes for the US Navy—proving costlier than originally anticipated—and setbacks for its entry into the medical isotope business. Given our belief the company has hit a more mature phase in its profit cycle and several other opportunities in our pipeline where we have higher conviction, we decided to exit our position.”

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Our calculations show that BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, BWX Technologies, Inc. was in 19 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 21 funds in the third quarter. BWXT delivered a 6.41% return in the past 3 months.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.