Is Valmont Industries (VMI) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Small Cap Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -5.02% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTSX, -4.99% by its Advisor Class: APDSX, and -4.95% by its Institutional Class: APHSX for the fourth quarter of 2020, all below the Russell 2000® Growth Index that delivered a 4.88% return and the Russell 2000® Index that was up by 12.70% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Artisan Small Cap Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Valmont Industries, Inc. (NYSE: VMI), and shared their insights on the company. Valmont Industries, Inc. is an Omaha, Nebraska-based manufacturing company that currently has a $5.4 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, VMI delivered a 46.67% return, extending its 12-month gains to 146.09%. As of May 17, 2021, the stock closed at $259.38 per share.

Here is what Artisan Small Cap Fund has to say about Valmont Industries, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

Valmont is a leading designer and manufacturer of engineered metal products. Its portfolio includes metal and concrete poles for traffic lighting, cell towers and highway signs; utility support structures such as poles for transmission lines and a single-axis solar tracker for utility-scale solar installations; and electric-powered, center-pivot irrigation systems that efficiently irrigate fields ranging from 4 to 500 acres. The company is led by a new management team we believe is positioning
it to benefit from several secular and cyclical tailwinds. These include accelerating spending for solar and wind and 5G infrastructure and renewed irrigation investments in international markets—Egypt and Kazakhstan in particular—to ensure more efficient (reducing water usage by 50%), reliable and secure food production following disruptions in supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Best Industrial Dividend Stocks to Buy for 2021

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Our calculations show that Valmont Industries, Inc. (NYSE: VMI) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Valmont Industries, Inc. was in 26 hedge fund portfolios. VMI delivered a 12.36% 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.