5 Best Performing Hedge Funds of 2021

3. SRS Investment Management

YTD Gain as of November 2021: 46%

SRS Investment Management is an employee-owned hedge fund led by Karthik Sarma. It operates from New York. One of the primary reasons for the success of the fund in 2021 was the incredible performance of Avis Budget Group, a mobility solutions provider in which SRS owns a large stake. The jump in the share price of Avis alone was responsible for around $5 billion in gains in a single day for SRS in November 2021. The fund has a portfolio value of over $7 billion, with investments concentrated in the services and tech sectors. 

One of the biggest holdings of SRS Investment Management is Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), the company that owns and runs a streaming platform. Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey in Q3 2021, Chicago-based firm Citadel Investment Group is a leading shareholder in Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), with 4.3 million shares worth more than $2.6 billion. 

In its Q1 2021 investor letter, Polen Capital, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“We purchased Netflix in March, initiating a 3% position in the Portfolio. We believe Netflix is a highly competitively advantaged company. It has recently met all our investment guardrails, and we anticipate it will remain sustainably above our guardrails over the next five years and beyond. We know Netflix for its ubiquitous streaming service and deep library of owned content. The company has made investments in this content (currently running at nearly $20 billion/year), generally keeping subscribers highly engaged and loyal to their service. The company has number one market share in 99% of markets globally, but it is our view that video streaming on-demand is still an underpenetrated space with many years of attractive growth likely ahead. The service is also relatively affordable at roughly $11/month on average globally.

We believe Netflix’s growth in content spend is beginning to moderate, which could allow margin expansion to continue for many years when paired with ongoing subscriber growth and price increases. While there is competition from the likes of Apple (Apple TV+), Amazon (Prime Video), Disney (Disney+ and Hulu), and others, we believe there can be a handful of winners in this industry. Already, we see many people subscribe to multiple streaming video services, with Netflix being their “anchor” service. That said, the barriers to entry are high, and we believe they are getting higher given the substantial amount of capital and size of the subscriber base required to maintain a competitive service for both viewers and content producers. Over the next five years, we expect Netflix’s earnings growth to be approximately 30% annualized and free cash flow to grow at an even higher rate.”