Is CRH plc (CRH) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

Artisan Partners Limited Partnership, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan International Fund’ fourth quarter 2020 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 8.87% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTIX, 8.90% by its Advisor Class: APDIX, and 8.92% by its Institutional Class: APHIX, in the fourth quarter of 2020, all below its MSCI EAFE benchmark that delivered a 16.05% return and its MSCI All Country World Index that was up by 17.01% in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Artisan International Fund, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned CRH plc (NYSE: CRH) and emphasized their views on the company. CRH plc is an Ireland-based building material company that currently has a $38 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, CRH delivered a 10.85% return, impressively extending its 12-month gains to 153.22%. As of March 16, 2021, the stock closed at $47.20 per share.

Here is what Artisan International Fund has to say about CRH plc in their Q4 2020 investor letter:

“We also initiated a new position in our infrastructure theme: CRH is a global building materials producer. We believe CRH is well-positioned to expand margins as global growth recovers and as it rationalizes its cost base. It also has an embedded option for increased US infrastructure spending as Democrats are poised to take control of the legislative and executive branches. We also like the company’s history of strong free cash flow generation and disciplined capital allocation focused on maintaining its dividend.”

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Our calculations show that CRH plc (NYSE: CRH) 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, CRH plc was in 7 hedge fund portfolios. CRH delivered an 16.17% 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.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:

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