Should You Now Consider Selling Your Baidu (BIDU) Shares?

Harding Loevner, an investment management firm, published its “Global Equity Fund” first-quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The Global Equity Composite fell 12.4% gross of fees, well beyond the 5.3% decline of the MSCI All Country World Index. The portfolio’s concentration in expensive stocks, a hazard of its commitment to investing in the stocks of high-quality rapidly growing businesses, hurt relative performance in a quarter during which investors fled from richly priced companies. Try to spend some time taking a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to be informed about their best picks for 2022.

In its Q1 2022 investor letter, Harding Loevner Emerging Markets Equity Fund mentioned Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 2000, Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) is a Beijing, China-based multinational technology company with a $50.9 billion market capitalization. Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) delivered a -2.12% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -21.52%. The stock closed at $145.63 per share on June 21, 2022.

Here is what Harding Loevner Emerging Markets Equity Fund has to say about Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:

“We sold Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) late in the quarter; however, it wasn’t due to company-specific factors as Baidu continues to generate strong cash flows and appears reasonably valued with a strong balance sheet. We have simply grown more concerned about the country risk associated with our Chinese shares, especially shares heavily owned by US investors, given the simmering tensions between the two nations. Our bottom-up fundamental research process continues to identify many high quality-growth businesses in China that compare favorably with global peers, but we have decided to trim our overweight as we reassess the implications of our holdings there for overall, portfolio-level risk.”

Our calculations show that Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) was in 47 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2022, compared to 38 funds in the previous quarter. Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) delivered a -0.72% return in the past 3 months.

In December 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q1 page.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.