L1 Capital, an investment management firm, released its “L1 Long Short Fund” first quarter 2023 investor letter, a copy of the same can be downloaded here. The equity market was volatile in the first quarter and the fund returned 2.1% (net) compared to 3.5% for the S&P ASX200 Accum Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top 5 holdings to know about its top bets for 2023.
L1 Long Short Fund highlighted stocks like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a multinational technology company that designs and manufactures smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories. On April 21, 2023, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock closed at $165.02 per share. One-month return of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was 4.26%, and its shares gained 1.31% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a market capitalization of $2.611 trillion.
L1 Long Short Fund made the following comment about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) (Short +27%) shares rose over the quarter with mega-cap technology stocks rallying as volatility in the banking sector led to investors crowding into stocks perceived as more defensive and liquid. We continue to see risks to Apple’s earnings as demand weakens for its key products and in particular its flagship iPhone 14 device. Despite having a fantastic brand and loyal customer base, we believe the company has benefitted significantly from a one-off pull forward of demand through the COVID-19 lockdown period, which we expect will start to normalise over the next 2-3 quarters.
The lockdown period delivered a huge windfall to Apple as a combination of work/study from home conditions and government stimulus fuelled a surge in purchases of its key products. During this period, Apple also benefitted from the launch of two of its most important products (5G iPhone 12 and Apple Silicon MacBook), along with significant market share gains in China. This drove a spike in net profit from a broadly flat range of US$50-60b p.a. between FY15 to FY20 to ~US$100b in FY22. We believe tougher economic conditions, a less exciting new product line-up and input cost pressures will weigh on Apple’s ability to meet/exceed consensus earnings expectations in 2023 (which assume solid earnings growth from an inflated base). Apple shares are currently trading around ~$165/share, compared to around $80/share pre-COVID.”
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in 9th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 135 hedge fund portfolios held Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 140 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in another article and shared the list of stocks that will 10x in five years. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 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.
