Penn National Gaming (PENN) Took a Spot in Baron Fund’s Top Contributors List

Published on May 13, 2021 at 12:32 pm by Jose Karlo Mari Tottoc in Hedge Fund Investor Letters, News

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Growth Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 0.94% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the Q1 of 2021, trailing its primary benchmark, the Russell 2000 Growth Index, that rose to 4.88% and the S&P 500 Index that delivered a 6.17% return for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Baron Growth Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Penn National Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ: PENN), and shared their insights on the company. Penn National Gaming, Inc. is a Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based casino company that currently has an $11.8 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, PENN delivered a -11.89% return, while its 12-month gains are up by 329.46%. As of May 12, 2021, the stock closed at $76.10 per share.

Here is what Baron Growth Fund has to say about Penn National Gaming, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“Shares of regional casino operation Penn National Gaming, Inc. increased in the quarter on strong share gains in the online sports betting and gaming markets in Michigan and the opening of the large Illinois online sports betting market. Strong sequential growth in revenue and sustained margin improvement in its brick and mortar operations also helped boost the share price. We think these positive developments will lead to improvements in the company’s balance sheet and its EBITDA to free cash flow conversion.”

Pixabay/Public Domain

Our calculations show that Penn National Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ: PENN) 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, Penn National Gaming, Inc. was in 41 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 45 funds in the third quarter. PENN delivered a -32.41% 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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