10 Best Stocks to Buy According to Eminence Capital’s Ricky Sandler

4. Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 50 

Eminence Capital’s Stake: $255,472,679

Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA) operates in the agriculture business. The past few months have demonstrated the strong financial performance of the firm and the ability it has to maintain growth and profitability despite market challenges. For example, the firm reported net sales of $4.8 billion in Q1 2024, a 2% increase compared to the $4.7 billion in Q1 2023. This growth was driven by a 6% increase in price, but was partially offset by a 2% unfavorable currency impact and a 1% decline in both volume and portfolio. The firm posted an adjusted EPS of $0.89 for Q1 2024, surpassing expectations and indicating solid earnings growth.

Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA) has been featured in the Eminence portfolio since the third quarter of 2019. In the first three months of 2024, Sandler increased the fund’s stake in the firm by around 17% compared to the previous quarter, highlighting his bullish thesis on the stock. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, 50 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $1.3 billion in Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA), compared to 51 the preceding quarter worth $1.2 billion.

In its Q1 2024 investor letter, Aristotle Capital Management, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Corteva, Inc. (NYSE:CTVA), the seed and crop protection company, was one of the largest contributors. As discussed in last quarter’s commentary, we believed the crop protection business was at or near a cyclical bottom in 2023, as customer destocking followed a 2020-2022 period of robust orders. Share prices have subsequently risen with Corteva’s crop protection sales falling just 5% in the previous quarter, an improved result compared to the 9% full-year decline, accompanied by guidance calling for a return to growth in the second half of 2024. However, as long-term investors, we look past cyclical fluctuations and are encouraged as Corteva further executes on many of the catalysts we identified. These include continued innovation (with over 400 new product launches in 2023) and share gains for the company’s Enlist E3 soybeans, which achieved 58% market penetration in 2023 and became the top-selling soybean technology in the U.S.”