We recently published a list of 11 Best Performing Large Cap Stocks So Far in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) stands against other best performing large cap stocks so far in 2025.

The stock market had a chaotic start to the first quarter of 2025. The uncertain tariff policy, growing fears of a recession, and inflation sent the stock market to the worst quarterly performance since the 2022 bear market. On March 31, ClearBridge Investment released its commentary on the market performance. Portfolio Managers Erica Furfaro and Margaret Vitrano highlighted that the S&P 500 index declined 4.27%, whereas the growth-heavy NASDAQ and Russell 1000 Growth Index fell 10.42% and 9.97%, respectively.

Elaborating more on the quarterly market performance, the portfolio managers noted that the Russell Growth Index underperformed the Russell Value Index by more than 1,200 basis points indicating that while large-cap stocks were impacted, the growth sector took the major hit. Tariffs were only one of the headwinds affecting the performance and the overall backdrop also includes the launch of Chinese LLM DeepSeek which questioned the AI capital expenditure of various large and mega-cap stocks. This capital expenditure bubble infected the performance of other “Magnificent Seven” to an extent that only one of the “Mag Seven” companies could outperform the Russell 1000 Index.

Erica Furfaro and Margaret Vitrano noted that their Large Cap Growth ESG strategy performed better than the benchmark amidst all the uncertainty. Their strategy takes the Russell Growth Index as a benchmark. The managers noted that the strategy revolved around being underweight for the Mag Seven and the IT sector. They also highlighted that balancing the portfolio with strong stocks across IT, communication, and financial services also played a pivotal role in generating more relative returns.

The investment fund also noted moving towards a “moving to the middle” approach, which refers to adjusting their portfolio to be less concentrated in any single sector and more balanced across different types of growth companies. Clearbridge has reduced its overweight position in healthcare and increased exposure to the IT sector, which was previously underweight. The fund believes this recalibration positions the portfolio for an economic slowdown. Lastly, Erica Furfaro and Margaret Vitrano noted that the first quarter witnessed the earnings growth broaden away from the Mag Seven and other large-cap stocks outside the big tech names delivered better earnings. They anticipate that, unless there is a recession, earnings growth from industrial and healthcare companies will begin to catch up with the technology sector in 2025.

Our Methodology

To curate the list of 11 best-performing large-cap stocks so far in 2025, we used the Finviz stock screener and Yahoo Finance. Using the screener we aggregate a list of large-cap stocks that have performed well on a year-to-date. Next, we cross-checked the performance from Yahoo Finance and ranked the stocks in ascending order of their year-to-date performance. We have also added the market capitalization of each stock and the hedge fund sentiment as well, as of Q4 2024. Please note that the data was recorded on May 2, 2025.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT)

Market Capitalization: $132.056B

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 101

Year-To-Date Performance: 39.83% 

Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) is the world’s largest music streaming platform. The company provides a platform that allows users to access, discover, and manage a vast library of over 100 million songs, nearly 7 million podcast titles, and 350,000 audiobooks. The company offers two main tiers including the freemium subscription and the premium account.

On May 2nd, Loop Capital analyst Alan Gould raised the firm’s price target on the stock from $435 to $550, while keeping a Hold rating on the shares. The analyst noted that while the company reported quarterly results reflecting above-expectation subscriptions, however, it missed the guidance on ad-supported revenues.

During the fiscal first quarter of 2025, Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) grew its monthly active users by 10% year-over-year and premium subscribers by 12%. This took the total revenue up by 15% to reach $4.19 billion. Moreover, the gross profit also improved by 32% during the same time. Management noted that they have launched Partner Programs in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, that allow video podcast creators to monetize their content through multiple revenue streams. As a result, the video podcast consumption on the platform has increased by over 20%, and creator payouts have grown by 300% in only a month. Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) is one of the best-performing large cap stocks so far in 2025.

JDP Capital Management stated the following regarding Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:

“Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) – Spotify remains our largest position. In the fourth quarter the company’s free cash flow was up 123% over last year resulting from strong operating leverage that the market had not priced in the valuation. Spotify ended 2024 with 675 million subscribers between paid and ad supported. Spotify and YouTube are the primary beneficiaries of the mega trend shift from linear media to podcasting.

One area of disappointment, and an area for possible concern, is the company’s challenges to grow advertising revenue and profitability. Advetising is an important component to the next leg of the company’s profitability inflection and ability to achieve management’s goal of €20 billion in future operating profit. The market has thus far been willing to ignore lagging advertising revenue because of continued growth in paid subscriptions and ability to sustain price hikes. In 2024 advertising only grew 7% representing about 12% of total revenue. Spotify is still struggling with targeting and performance advertising metrics that can compete with other scaled players like YouTube or Instagram. Although not yet alarming to the investment thesis, the lack of advertising revenue growth is something we are watching closely as the economy softens. The stock was up about 20% in the first quarter.”

Overall, SPOT ranks 5th on our list of best performing large cap stocks so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of SPOT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SPOT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

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