Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen Focus Growth” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the fourth quarter of 2021, the Polen Focus Growth Composite Portfolio (the “Portfolio”) returned 5.24% and 5.07% gross and net of fees, respectively. The Russell 1000 Growth Index (the “Index”) returned 11.64%, and the S&P 500 (the “S&P”) 11.03%. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Polen Focus Growth, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Paypal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) and discussed its stance on the firm. Paypal Holdings, Inc. is a San Jose, California-based financial technology company with a $128.7 billion market capitalization. PYPL delivered a -41.38% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -62.81%. The stock closed at $110.54 per share on February 16, 2022.
Here is what Polen Focus Growth has to say about Paypal Holdings, Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“The top absolute detractors during the fourth quarter (includes) PayPal. PayPal was the most notable underperformer during the quarter and year. PayPal’s business continues to thrive, even on difficult comparisons with 2020. As the world’s largest digital wallet and fintech company, PayPal benefits from strong secular tailwinds from e-commerce and digital payments.
The negative share price reaction stemmed from two issues in our view. First, management modestly raised its 2021 revenue and earnings guidance early in the year, only to reduce it back to its original guidance. We have noticed that PayPal has tried to give overly precise guidance in the past and has had to recalibrate.
Overall, the company is growing well within our expectations and at what we believe to be a healthy rate. In addition, headwinds from its rapidly declining processed transactions from the eBay marketplace is not material to PayPal’s long-term success, in our view…” (Click here to see the full text)
Our calculations show that Paypal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) ranks 9th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. PYPL was in 123 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 143 funds in the previous quarter. Paypal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) delivered a -46.41% return in the past 3 months.
In January 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on PYPL 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.
