We recently compiled a list of the Harvard University Stock Portfolio: Top 10 Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) stands against Harvard University’s other stock picks.
When it comes to college prestige, Ivy League institutions lead the rankings. For an investment that can approach $60,000 per year in tuition and fees as of the 2022-2023 academic year, these schools promise an elite education and promising career prospects post-graduation. Although opinions may vary on which Ivy League school offers the best education, there’s no debate over which has the largest endowment. Harvard University’s endowment stands at an impressive $53.2 billion, bolstered by generous donations and strategic investments managed by the Harvard Management Company (HMC).
Founded in 1974, Harvard Management Company provides a dedicated funding stream that supports the university’s teaching and research, contributing over one-third of Harvard’s annual operating budget. In fiscal year 2024, Harvard’s endowment distributions totaled $2.4 billion, representing 37% of the university’s annual revenue. These funds supported key areas such as financial aid, faculty, and research initiatives. The university allocated $749 million toward financial aid across its schools, including $250 million for undergraduates. Harvard’s endowment portfolio is heavily weighted toward private equity and hedge funds, with private equity comprising 39% of the portfolio and hedge funds making up 32%.
According to Harvard Management Company CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, the endowment targets an 8% return, and its seven-year annualized return of 9.3% has exceeded that goal. This performance currently places it mid-tier among Ivy League and other elite institutions. While its fiscal year 2024 return did not match Columbia’s 11.5% or Brown’s 11.3%, it outpaced those of MIT, Cornell, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania. Despite fiscal year 2024 being a strong period for public equities, with the S&P 500 frequently hitting record highs, Narvekar states that HMC’s strategy of lower public equity exposure still delivered robust returns:
“In FY24, public equity and hedge fund portfolios stood out for their strong performance. This is a particularly positive indicator, since HMC’s hedge fund portfolio has less equity exposure than most hedge fund indices, yet still outperformed during a strong year for equities.”
Notably, HMC significantly reduced the endowment’s exposure to real estate and natural resources, scaling it down from 25% in 2018 to just 6% in fiscal year 2024. This strategic shift has contributed positively to the endowment’s overall returns. Large-cap technology equities, particularly in the IT sector, may have also boosted returns for the fund. Michael Markov, founder of Markov Processes International, suggested that Harvard likely benefitted from “overweighting IT and the Mag 7 relative to the broad S&P 500.” Markov considers fiscal year 2024 a success for Harvard and a testament to HMC CEO Narvekar’s strategy of overhauling the university’s complex portfolio during his seven-year tenure.
Our Methodology
For this analysis, we examined Harvard Management Company’s stock portfolio from the third quarter of 2024. The stocks are ranked based on the firm’s stake value in each holding.
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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a colorful high-end graphics card being plugged in to a gaming computer.
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Harvard Management Company’s Stake: $115.1 million
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is a leader in graphics computing and networking solutions, with high demand for its GPUs, especially in gaming and AI applications.
On October 29, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) unveiled its new Enterprise Reference Architectures, which are blueprints designed to help partners and customers build AI factories. More recently, on November 6, the Wall Street darling announced a collaboration with Hugging Face to advance open-source AI robotics research and development.
As NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) prepares to report its October quarter earnings on November 20, Citi anticipates a “smaller ‘beat & raise’” due to the company’s ongoing transition to the Blackwell chip series. Citi analyst Atif Malik expects results to align closely with projections, with total and data center sales forecasted at $33 billion and $29 billion, slightly below the consensus estimates of $34 billion and $30 billion. For the January quarter, Malik raised the data center forecast, anticipating an additional $3-4 billion in sales from Blackwell, as NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has resolved production issues but remains supply-constrained. Citi now estimates January quarter total and data center sales at $36.5 billion and $32 billion, just below market expectations of $37.5 billion and $33 billion, with a projected gross margin of 73%—approximately 30 basis points under consensus due to a higher mix of H200 chips.
Polen Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“In a reversal from the past two quarters, NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) represented our top relative contributor this quarter, despite the modest underperformance, declining -1.7%. In many ways, NVIDIA was a microcosm of the broader market’s heightened volatility. Beneath the placid surface, the company experienced a 27% drawdown followed by a +31% rally, only to repeat the cycle with a -21% drawdown followed by a subsequent 20% rally to finish the quarter. In our view, the stock’s volatility goes beyond fundamental business drivers, but the company in turn benefitted from increasing capital spending budgets from cloud service providers and large enterprises for generative AI (“GenAI”) infrastructure spending. Simultaneously, the stock endured weakness related to the delayed next-generation Blackwell chip, and an earnings forecast that exceeded expectations, albeit not as much as some investors hoped. While we continue to believe NVIDIA is a highly advantaged business, with significant demand for their chips and servers ahead of the need for that hardware from real-world businesses, we are cautious about its growth sustainability since it lacks recurring revenue.”
Overall NVDA ranks 5th on Harvard University’s list of top stock picks. While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that certain AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NVDA 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.