Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its fourth-quarter investor letter for “Polen International Growth Strategy”. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In 2025, foreign equity markets reached their highest returns in more than a decade, whereas Polan International Growth had flat returns. This was not attributed to weakening business fundamentals among its holdings, but the market’s preference for cyclically sensitive businesses. The strategy seeks to invest in companies with enduring competitive strengths, high returns on invested capital, and consistent earnings. The Strategy returned -2.21% (gross) and -2.52% (net) in Q4 compared to 5.05% return for MSCI ACWI (ex-USA). For 2025, the Strategy returned 0.68% (gross) and -0.52% (net) compared to 32.39% return for the Index. In addition, please check the Strategy’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, Polen International Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like SAP SE (NYSE:SAP). Headquartered in Walldorf, GermanySAP SE (NYSE:SAP) is a leading enterprise application and business solutions provider. On March 17, 2026, SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) stock closed at $190.12 per share. One-month return of SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) was -7.35%, and its shares lost 29.96% over the past 52 weeks. SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) has a market capitalization of $223.56 billion.
Polen International Growth Strategy stated the following regarding SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
“The Portfolio’s top relative and absolute detractors were monday.com, MercadoLibre, and SAP. SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) came under some pressure in the quarter despite cloud revenue growth coming in ahead of expectations and a still resilient accumulation in backlogs. We continue to view SAP as one of the more resilient large-scale software business models as it is mission-critical component of customers’ day-to-day operations. Given its strong market position, vast partner ecosystem, balanced growth across new and existing customers, high recurring revenues, and improving margin profile, we believe SAP is well positioned to continue delivering at least mid-teens earnings growth for many years to come.”
SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) is not on our list of 40 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds Heading Into 2026. According to our database, 36 hedge fund portfolios held SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) at the end of the fourth quarter, up from 34 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) 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 SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered SAP SE (NYSE:SAP) and shared a list of best German stocks to buy according to analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.
