Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Emerging Markets Fund” fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, the fund returned 6.81% (Institutional Shares), compared to a 7.86% return for its principal benchmark, the MSCI EM Index, and a 7.72% return for the MSCI EM IMI Growth Index (the Proxy Benchmark). The fund appreciated 8.29% for the full year, the benchmark returned 9.83%, and the Proxy Benchmark gained 8.09%. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Baron Emerging Markets Fund featured stocks such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) in the fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Hangzhou, the People’s Republic of China, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) provides technology infrastructure and marketing reach. On February 21, 2024, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) stock closed at $75.58 per share. One-month return of Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) was 2.34%, and its shares lost 19.73% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) has a market capitalization of $188.95 billion.
Baron Emerging Markets Fund stated the following regarding Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) in its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) is the largest retailer and e-commerce company in China. Alibaba operates shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall and owns 33% of Ant Group, which operates Alipay, China’s largest third-party online payment provider. Shares of Alibaba were down in the fourth quarter due largely to the delay of the previously announced spin-off of its cloud division. Quarterly results were roughly in line with Street expectations, with strength in profitability. We retain conviction that Alibaba is well positioned to benefit from the ongoing growth in online commerce and cloud development in China. While the company is seeing early progress in its efforts to re-invigorate customer engagement and retention as well as merchant investment initiatives, we believe this investment will likely take some time to flow through to accelerating earnings growth. As such, we remain investors but have reduced our position as we monitor further progress.”
An e-commerce platform displaying a wide range of products to customers online.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) is in 16th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. At the end of the fourth quarter, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) was held by 116 hedge fund portfolios, up from 110 in the previous quarter, according to our database.
We discussed Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) in another article and shared the list of best Chinese stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.
