Is Match Group (MTCH) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Select Strategy” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The ClearBridge Select Strategy slightly underperformed its Russell 3000 Index benchmark in the first quarter. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains across nine of the 10 sectors in which it was invested during the quarter (out of 11 sectors total) You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

ClearBridge Investments, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH), and shared their insights on the company. Match Group, Inc. is a Dallas, Texas-based online dating service company that currently has a $37.2 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, MTCH delivered a -8.77% return, while its 1-month return is down by -6.43%. As of June 04, 2021, the stock closed at $137.93  per share.

Here is what ClearBridge Investments has to say about Match Group, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“In addition to the new issue market, we have been tactically adding growth exposure. Our largest new position was Match Group, the global leader in the online dating space that was spun off by Interactive Corp. in 2020. Singles have put their life plans on hold during the pandemic but continue to want to meet people. Match was negative impacted by COVID, especially in markets like India, but the business is very profitable with high margins and is driving growth through international expansion, increasing users and better monetization and engagement.”

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Our calculations show that Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MTCH) 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, Match Group, Inc. was in 68 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 72 funds in the fourth quarter of 2020. MTCH delivered a -5.71% 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.