Here’s Why Madison Funds Sold its Novartis (NVS) Stake

Madison Funds, managed by Madison Asset Management, LLC, released its “Madison Investors Fund” third quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The Madison Investors Fund (Class Y) was down -5.46% in the third quarter, compared to the -4.88% decline in the benchmark S&P 500 Index. The Fund (-21.21%) remains ahead of the benchmark (-23.87%) for the year-to-date period. Try to spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings for you to have an idea about their best stock picks this 2022.

In its Q3 2022 investor letter, Madison Investors Fund mentioned Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 1996, Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) is a Basel, Switzerland-based multinational pharmaceutical corporation with a $173.6 billion market capitalization. Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) delivered a -9.07% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -3.89%. The stock closed at $79.54 per share on October 27, 2022.

Here is what Madison Investors Fund has to say about Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:

“We sold our position in Novartis. We like the company’s track record of innovation, and its diversified portfolio of drugs. However, we’ve become increasingly concerned about the outlook for some of its recently launched therapeutics, as well as some generic competition in a few of its mature drugs. If pressed, we still like the odds that Novartis will do well, but the outlook is a little cloudier than it’s been in a while. As noted above, we’ve been big fans of its Alcon unit for many years, and now that Alcon is independent, we decided to concentrate our investment there.”

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

Our calculations show that Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) was in 22 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2022, compared to 21 funds in the previous quarter. Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) delivered a -7.33% return in the past 3 months.

In March 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Novartis AG (NYSE:NVS) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q3 page.

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