Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The robust US economy, a general disinflation trend, and increased corporate earnings pushed the US equity markets to a new all-time high in the first quarter. The fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 8.65%, 8.71%, and 8.71% respectively, in the first quarter compared to an 8.99% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2024.
Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks like Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), with a market capitalization of $1.18 trillion, is a technology company that develops products to connect people. One-month return of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was 5.53%, and its shares gained 84.33% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 23, 2024, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stock closed at $465.78 per share.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Our top and bottom individual contributors were each found in the communication service sector: Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) was up 37%, while Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) was down -23%. Shares of social technology company Meta Platforms soared after the company reported blowout earnings and announced its first-ever dividend payment. Net income more than tripled year over year as revenue growth accelerated to its fastest pace since 2021 on improving engagement across its social media platforms and broad-based strength in advertising. In spite of its large size, Meta has been able to outgrow the broader digital ad market by integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that boost ad spend by increasing engagement, content creation and measurement. Since its 2022 lows, when shares were trading for less than 10X next year’s estimated earnings, Meta has grown its market capitalization by nearly $1 trillion. To put that into perspective, that is more than the combined market capitalizations of the smallest 225 companies in the large-cap Russell 1000® Index. Shares currently sell for about 24X FY1 earnings. While the stock has benefited from enthusiasm around AI, the re-rating in the price multiple seems entirely rational considering Meta’s growth drivers, consistent free cash flow generation and a large net cash position. While Meta is no longer cheap, we feel it is still reasonably priced for a good business with attractive growth prospects and will continue to manage its position size.”
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Meta Platforms, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) trailing 12 months revenue is $142.71 billion and its year over year quarterly revenue growth rate is 27.30% and earnings growth rate is 116.70%. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is in third position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 246 hedge fund portfolios held Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) at the end of the first quarter which was 242 in the previous quarter.
In another article, we discussed Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) and shared the list of best AI stock picks of Billionaire Steve Cohen. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as Microsoft but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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