ICON (ICLR) Fell Along with Broader CROs

Diamond Hill Capital, an investment management company, released its “Small-Mid Cap Fund” second-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In Q2, the market surged uniformly for the rest of the quarter following a sharp decline in April due to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement. The portfolio returned 5.60% (gross) and 5.37% (net) compared to an 8.59% return for the Russell 2500 Index. For more information on the fund’s top picks in 2025, please check its top five holdings.

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, Diamond Hill Small-Mid Cap 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 9.71%, and its shares lost 50.14% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 11, 2025, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $159.71 per share with a market capitalization of $12.421 billion.

Diamond Hill Small-Mid Cap Fund  stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

“Other bottom Q2 contributors included ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR), Post Holdings and Ashland. ICON’s shares declined during the quarter, as contract research organizations (CROs) broadly underperformed amid ongoing uncertainty around the pace and timing of recovery in biotech and pharmaceutical order volumes. Investor sentiment weakened as visibility into normalized growth trajectories remained limited.”

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 (NASDAQ:ICLR) reported revenue of $2.017 billion in Q2 2025, representing a year-on-year decrease of 4.8%. 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 value stocks to buy according to Seth Klarman. In its Q2 2025 investor letter, Baron Small Cap Fund noted that ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) fell due to ongoing instability in the clinical development market. 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.