Warren Buffett’s 5 Worst Investments of All Time

3. Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY)

Number of hedge fund holders: 15 

Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) is a France-based pharmaceutical company founded in 2004. It is ranked third on our list of Warren Buffett’s worst investments of all time. The stock has returned more than 10% to investors year-to-date. Buffett first showed interest in the stock in 2006 when he bought over 480,000 shares at around $45 per share. He subsequently increased his stake in the firm in the coming months and years, before finally reversing course. In the first quarter of 2018, he trimmed his take in the pharma giant 4.6% from the preceding quarter. 

Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) has not performed as well as Buffett would have liked in the time that held onto the shares. In 2019, the five-year return for the pharma giant was -20%, a number that could have prompted Buffett to sell his position in the company. 

Out of the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Washington-based investment firm Fisher Asset Management is a leading shareholder in Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) with 18 million shares worth more than $896 million. 

In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Artisan Partners Limited Partnership, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Sanofi (NASDAQ: SNY) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Top detractors in Q4 included Sanofi. This defensive security was out of favor as vaccine distribution started in earnest and the market shifted focus to a post-COVID world. Sanofi performed about in line with other global pharmaceuticals companies. We believe Sanofi’s management team will have success improving the pipeline and managing costs through restructuring. For perspective, Swedish Match was down ~4% in the quarter but provided a 54% total return for 2020.”