Is BHP Group (BHP) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

Harding Loevner, an investment management firm, published its “International Equity Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A net return of 0.89% was recorded by the fund for the Q1 of 2021, trailing the MSCI All Country World Ex-US benchmark, which returned 3.60%. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Harding Loevner, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned BHP Group (NYSE: BHP), and shared their insights on the company. BHP Group is a Melbourne, Australia-based mining company that currently has a $193.2 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, BHP delivered a 16.25% return, extending its 12-month gains to 57.43%. As of May 28, 2021, the stock closed at $75.95 per share.

Here is what Harding Loevner has to say about BHP Group in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“Our purchase of Australian mining company BHP is an example of a quality company at a moderate valuation that should deliver attractive long-term returns. We believe the market has undervalued its enduring competitive advantage due to its low cost iron and copper mining operations which has allowed the company to deliver consistent profits and cash flows across the inevitable ups and downs of the global metals cycle. While the variability of commodity prices prevents BHP from scoring in the top ranks of measured quality, we are willing to bear some of that uncertainty in return for a more attractive valuation given the company’s strong business fundamentals.”

Our calculations show that BHP Group (NYSE: BHP) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, BHP Group was in 18 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 20 funds in the fourth quarter of 2020. BHP delivered a -3.57% 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.