We recently published a list of Louis Navellier’s 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) stands against other Louis Navellier’s stock picks with huge upside potential.
Navellier & Associates is an independent money management firm founded in 1987 by renowned stock analyst Louis Navellier. Headquartered in Reno, Nevada, the firm has spent over three decades delivering disciplined, style-consistent investment strategies to both individual and institutional clients. Its core mission is to maximize returns while effectively managing excessive risk, offering customized portfolios built on a proprietary mix of quantitative and fundamental analysis. Distinct from firms that mimic market indexes, Navellier & Associates aims to outperform them, constructing portfolios that exhibit low correlation to standard benchmarks, greater diversification, and reduced overall volatility.
Navellier’s investment philosophy is based on a rigorous three-step, bottom-up stock selection methodology designed to identify inefficiencies and high-growth opportunities in the market. The first step in this process uses a proprietary quantitative screening system that evaluates market data and individual stock statistics, measuring risk through standard deviation and reward through alpha. This narrows the investment universe to stocks ranking in the top percentiles for favorable risk/reward characteristics. The second step employs fundamental analysis to target companies with strong earnings growth, healthy profit margins, and reasonable forward-looking price-to-earnings ratios. The third and final step involves a proprietary optimization model that strategically allocates portfolio holdings to maximize alpha and minimize volatility. This structured approach results in portfolios that are diversified across sectors and industries and are particularly suited for long-term investors aiming to achieve steady growth in varying market conditions.
Louis Navellier, the firm’s Founder, Chairman, Chief Investment Officer, and Chief Compliance Officer, continues to oversee the portfolios he helped originate. A highly respected voice in the financial community, Navellier has published quantitative growth stock research since 1980. His insights have been widely disseminated across CNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg, and MarketWatch, and he has been profiled in leading financial publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Barron’s, and The Wall Street Journal. His methodologies and career have also been spotlighted in books like Secrets of the Investment All-Stars and Investing Under Fire.
Navellier & Associates manages more than $1 billion in private and institutional assets and is a trusted resource for high-net-worth individuals and organizations. The firm offers personalized portfolio reviews that include detailed analysis, risk assessments, and tailored investment recommendations. Portfolio sizes range from $100,000 to over $100 million, and all investment decisions are uniquely customized to align with each client’s financial goals, preferences, and risk tolerance. This commitment to individualized service underscores the firm’s belief that every investor deserves a strategy tailored to their unique financial journey.
As of its latest 13F filing for the fourth quarter of 2024, Navellier & Associates reported managing approximately $834 million in securities. The firm’s top ten holdings represent 29.42% of the total portfolio, highlighting a focused yet strategically diversified investment approach rooted in decades of systematic analysis and seasoned market expertise.
Our Methodology
We searched through Navellier & Associates’ Q4 2024 13F filings to identify Louis Navellier’s stock picks with the highest upside potential. From the resultant data, we picked out the equities with upside potential higher than 50% based on analyst ratings and discussed why they stood out as sound potential investments. Finally, we ranked the stocks based on their respective price targets according to analysts. Additionally, we have mentioned the hedge fund sentiment around each stock using data from 1,009 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a customer trying on a piece of apparel in the retailer’s spacious dressing room, emphasizing the company’s focus on personal care and experience.
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders as of Q4: 51
Navellier & Associates’ Equity Stake: $7.82 Million
Upside Potential as of April 23: 65.64%
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF), an American lifestyle retailer established in 1892, has always offered contemporary and stylish clothing. The company has recently demonstrated strong financial and operational momentum, highlighted by impressive results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, which ended on January 31. Abercrombie reported earnings per share (EPS) of $3.29, a notable 38% increase compared to $2.38 in Q4 of the previous year. This performance was driven by a strong holiday shopping season, full-price selling, effective product mix, disciplined cost control, and efficient inventory management, all contributing to a substantial improvement in operating margin.
The company’s strategic investments in store remodels and multichannel retailing aim to enhance its market positioning and deepen customer engagement. These efforts are part of a broader transformation strategy to modernize the brand experience and expand its reach across various channels. For the fourth quarter, net sales rose by 9%, while comparable sales increased by an impressive 14%. Over the full fiscal year 2024, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) achieved net sales of $4.95 billion, reflecting a 16% increase year-over-year, bolstered by 17% growth in comparable sales and double-digit gains across both geographic regions and brand portfolios.
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) is placed fifth among Louis Navellier’s stock picks with huge upside potential, as analysts project its growth potential as 65.64% and have set a price target of $124.13 on the stock.
Looking ahead, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) has issued a positive outlook for fiscal year 2025. The company projects net sales growth between 3% and 5%, and an operating margin in the range of 14% to 15%. Expected net income per diluted share is forecasted between $10.40 and $11.40, reinforcing confidence in its continued growth trajectory. Additionally, the firm announced a new $1.3 billion share repurchase authorization and plans to execute approximately $400 million in share buybacks during 2025.
ClearBridge Mid Cap Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“We are encouraged by the high proportion of positive returns on new ideas added over the last five quarters of elevated new idea generation, with solid contributions to overall performance despite their representing a modest portion of the Strategy’s assets.
We continued to deliver strong new idea generation, adding four new investments in the quarter: OneStream (through participating in its IPO), Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF), Wintrust Financial, and FTAI Aviation.
Abercrombie & Fitch is a global retailer with two primary brands, A&F and Hollister, providing apparel and accessories targeting millennials and Gen Z, respectively. Following multiple years of mis-execution, the company has repositioned its brands for durable growth, rationalized its store footprint, and is growing profitably with a nimble, fast-follower fashion strategy.”
Overall, ANF ranks 5th on our list of Louis Navellier’s stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of ANF as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ANF but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
