Philip Morris (PM), Part of Fundsmith’s Q4 2020 Bottom Five

Fundsmith LLP, an investment management firm, published its ‘Fundsmith Equity Fund’ year-end 2020 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 18.3% was recorded by the fund in the fourth quarter of 2020, outperforming its MSCI World benchmark that delivered a 12.3% return. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.op 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Fundsmith LLP, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) and emphasized their views on the company. Philip Morris International Inc. is a New York-based cigarette company that currently has a $135 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, PM delivered a 4.44% return, extending its 12-month gains to 19.68%. As of March 10, 2021, the stock closed at $86.76 per share.

Here is what Fundsmith LLP has to say about Philip Morris International Inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:

“We are impressed with Philip Morris’s development of Reduced Risk Products or RRPs, most notably its heat not burn system iQOS. It seems we are not the only ones to view it this way as it was recently included in the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index for the first time. For the moment the shares are weighed down by COVID related disruption to some of its markets and simple prejudice which seems to prevent some commentators from weighing the benefits the RRPs bring against the obvious fact that it is a tobacco company.”

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Our calculations show that Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) 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, Philip Morris International Inc. was in 52 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 50 funds in the third quarter. PM delivered a 1.76% 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.