Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Small Cap Fund’ fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -6.99% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTSX, -6.93% by its Advisor Class: APDSX, and -6.93% by its Institutional Class: APHSX for the fourth quarter of 2021, all below the Russell 2000® Growth Index that delivered a 0.01% return and the Russell 2000® Index that was up by 2.14% for the same period. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Artisan Small Cap Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) and discussed its stance on the firm. LivePerson, Inc. is a New York, New York-based global technology company with a $1.6 billion market capitalization. LPSN delivered a -36.09% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -62.03%. The stock closed at $22.838 per share on February 23, 2022.
Here is what Artisan Small Cap Fund has to say about LivePerson, Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“LivePerson is a leading provider of mobile and online messaging solutions. We believe customer service and sales centers are shifting from voice to digital communications, and LivePerson is wellequipped to lead this shift. Its LiveEngage cloud-based platform allows brands to engage with customers across digital channels at scale, more efficiently and more effectively. The market opportunity is substantial and goes well beyond digital conversations in service contexts and into areas such as sales, marketing and possibly social media monitoring. A key part of our thesis when we began our investment campaign in 2018 was the arrival of Alex Spinelli as the company’s CTO. Mr. Spinelli came from Amazon, where he was one of the architects and leaders of Alexa. In addition, Mr. Spinelli brought several well-respected technologists to LivePerson with him. Unfortunately, Mr. Spinelli announced his departure from LivePerson in Q3. In addition to this development, our profit cycle thesis has been stalled as the company makes a round of investments into its sales force which will weigh on margins over the near term. We believe Mr. Spinelli’s replacement, Andrew Hamel, carries the credentials to continue leading LivePerson’s technology efforts. Mr. Spinelli worked for Mr. Hamel at Amazon, and the investments in the sales force have the potential to allow the company to scale its business more rapidly. Still, we are in a holding pattern until we gain conviction that the profit cycle we originally invested in can continue to flourish with these changes.”
Mangostar/Shutterstock.com
Our calculations show that LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. LPSN was in 28 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 26 funds in the previous quarter. LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ: LPSN) delivered a -43.63% return in the past 3 months.
In February 2022, we published an article that includes LPSN in the 5 Software Stocks to Sell Now According to Cathie Wood. You can find more than 100 investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
