Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen Focus Growth” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the fourth quarter of 2021, the Polen Focus Growth Composite Portfolio (the “Portfolio”) returned 5.24% and 5.07% gross and net of fees, respectively. The Russell 1000 Growth Index (the “Index”) returned 11.64%, and the S&P 500 (the “S&P”) 11.03%. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Polen Focus Growth, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and discussed its stance on the firm. Amazon.com, Inc. is a Seattle, Washington-based e-commerce company with a $1.6 billion market capitalization. AMZN delivered a -5.17% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -4.43%. The stock closed at $3,162.01 per share on February 16, 2022.
Here is what Polen Focus Growth has to say about Amazon.com, Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Amazon has lagged over the past year and a half. The company now must surpass the substantial revenue windfall it achieved in 2020 while also managing supply chain disruptions, wage inflation, and investments to further distance itself from its competition and serve heightened demand. We feel these headwinds are short-term and transitory. Amazon’s first-party ecommerce business is a low (actually negative) margin business, and these short-term investments and inefficiencies are pushing it further into the red. However, the now large, faster-growing, higher-margin businesses like Amazon Prime, AWS, and advertising should allow margins to move much higher over time.
Our view of long-term growth and margin expansion potential for Amazon remains unchanged, and the valuation has only become more attractive. According to our research, if our expectations for free cash flow growth over the next five years materialize, then Amazon has the potential to deliver among the highest returns across our Focus Growth portfolio. It is now our second-largest position, just behind Alphabet.”
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Our calculations show that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) ranks 3rd on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. AMZN was in 242 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 271 funds in the previous quarter. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) delivered a -10.90% return in the past 3 months.
In February 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on AMZN in another article. You can find other 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.
