Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” third-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The equity market rally persisted in the third quarter as investors ignored tariffs, buoyed by strong corporate earnings, rising AI investment, and prospects of economic support from US fiscal policy and lower interest rates. Against this backdrop, the fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 0.83%, 0.91%, and 0.90%, respectively, in the third quarter compared to a 5.33% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2025.
In its third-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks such as Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV). Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) is a leading financial technology company that provides payment and fintech services. The one-month return of Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) was 7.67%, and its shares lost 67.28% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 26, 2025, Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) stock closed at $67.50 per share, with a market capitalization of $36.693 billion.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) in its third quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Outside of consumer staples, our biggest detractor was Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV), a provider of financial technology, core processing and payment processing services to financial institutions and merchants. Organic growth of 8% came in about 200bps below expectations due to top-line and margin misses in the merchant acquiring business. Despite the disappointments in the merchant business, Clover, Fiserv’s point of-sale system for small and medium businesses, continued to meet expectations, with volume up 8% and revenue growth accelerating 300bps to 30% year-over-year. Based on our sum of the parts valuation, we continue to believe Fiserv is receiving little credit for Clover. The market is overly concerned about the competitive nature of merchant acquiring and legacy processors losing market share to new entrants. We believe Fiserv’s business is more resilient and will continue to grow in the medium term driven by its scale and Clover. Moreover, we believe fintech and payments are good businesses that appear undervalued by the market. Both businesses are in highly consolidated industries where scale advantages are critical, and revenues are sticky due to high switching costs. A high share of recurring revenue and profit, an attractive margin profile and high free cash flow conversion are characteristics that should provide downside protection, in our view.”
Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 83 hedge fund portfolios held Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) at the end of the third quarter, which was 94 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) 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 Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) and shared the list of best digital payments stocks to invest in. Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) detracted from Bailard Technology Strategy’s performance in Q3 2025 due to leadership changes, product launch delays, underperformance in Merchant Solutions, and downward revisions in FY25 revenue and margin guidance. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.
