Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen Global Growth” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly gross return of 7.08% was delivered by the fund for the fourth quarter of 2021, versus the MSCI All-Country World Index (the “Index”)’s return of 6.67% for the same period. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Polen Global Growth, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGN) and discussed its stance on the firm. Align Technology, Inc. is a San Jose, California-based orthodontics company with a $41.5 billion market capitalization. ALGN delivered a -19.90% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -12.20%. The stock closed at $526.38 per share on February 16, 2022.
Here is what Polen Global Growth has to say about Align Technology, Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“During the fourth quarter, we added to our positions in Align Technologies. We added to Align because we think the business is performing very well and is more reasonably valued given our ongoing growth expectations. We believe the business has consistently grown more robust with each passing year of our ownership. CEO Joe Hogan has focused efforts, manpower, and capital into moat strengthening initiatives. They have consistently innovated, successfully expanded their global manufacturing footprint, enhanced marketing through multiple channels around the world, and used Artificial Intelligence to shorten the treatment planning process to highlight a few successes.
These initiatives have aided in increasing returns to scale as the business has expanded. For example, during the 19 years from Align’s creation to 2016, the company compounded revenue growth at a rate of 23%. From 2016 to today, that annualized revenue growth has accelerated to 29%. The business’ fundamentals continue to strengthen while the addressable market is still only 10% penetrated. We expect many more years of compounding from the company and believe it is trading for a fair price today.”
Photo by Karlo Tottoc on Unsplash
Our calculations show that Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGN) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. ALGN was in 49 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 57 funds in the previous quarter. Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGN) delivered a -23.97% return in the past 3 months.
In March 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on ALGN in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
