Vltava Fund Sold Celanese Corporation (CE) in Q1 as it Reached its Valuation

Vltava Fund, an investment management company, recently released its first-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The fund doesn’t own any of the currently largest stocks in the portfolio, except for Berkshire. The stocks in the fund’s portfolio trade at lower earnings multiples compared to the largest ones. The portfolio stocks have more growth potential, as evidenced by the fund’s recent returns. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2024.

Vltava Fund featured stocks like Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) is a chemical and specialty materials company. On April 5, 2024, Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) stock closed at $162.62 per share. One-month return of Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) was 3.30%, and its shares gained 51.43% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) has a market capitalization of $18.142 billion.

Vltava Fund stated the following regarding Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:

“We sold three positions: Lockheed Martin, LabCorp, and Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE). Both LabCorp and Lockheed were large positions for us at the time, and their returns had a positive material impact on the performance of the overall portfolio. Celanese, on the other hand, was always a small position, and so, despite the good returns it achieved, its impact on the portfolio’s overall return was negligible. We had bought Celanese shortly after the company had announced a large acquisition of DuPont’s broad portfolio of engineering thermoplastics and elastomers. This acquisition, while strategically sound, was overpriced in our opinion. Many investors apparently thought the same thing, as the stock reacted by dropping significantly to USD 90 in the following months. This decline nevertheless seemed excessive to us, and we therefore included Celanese stock into our portfolio. At the price of around USD 150 during March of this year, we felt, first, that our original investment hypothesis of a valuation correction had been fulfilled and, second, that the valuation was roughly in line with the company’s value. We therefore sold the stock.”

A laboratory full of vials, tubes and Bunsen burners, with a scientist in the center examining a chemical.

Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. At the end of the fourth quarter, Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) was held by 16 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 19 in the previous quarter, according to our database.

We discussed Celanese Corporation (NYSE:CE) in another article and shared the list of stocks Warren Buffett just bought and sold. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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