Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Select Equity Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund returned -0.4% compared to a 4.28% return for the S&P 500 Index and a -2.2% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. Year-to-date the fund increased 10.4% compared to 15.3% and 6.6% return for the indexes. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Select Equity Fund highlighted stocks like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, offers various platforms and services operating through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments. The one-month return of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was -8.15%, and its shares gained 30.61% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 19, 2024, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock closed at $168.40 per share with a market capitalization of $2.061 trillion.
Artisan Select Equity Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“The top contributors to performance for the quarter were Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Lam Research and Elevance. Alphabet shares rose by 21% during the quarter, making it the largest contributor to our performance. The company reported excellent Q1 earnings, highlighting accelerating revenue growth, strong profitability and effective capital allocation. Alphabet’s core search business is growing at a mid-teens rate—the fastest growth rate in nearly two years. Importantly, its non-search businesses have reached significant scale, with its cloud and YouTube businesses expected to reach a combined run-rate of $100 billion by the end of 2024
During the quarter, Alphabet also displayed meaningful progress in its AI initiatives, and we believe it is well positioned to be a leader in this field. The capital allocation is solid. It is returning all the free cash flow to shareholders and announced that it will start paying a dividend. Alphabet’s shares are trading at just over 20X next year’s earnings, which is a very reasonable valuation for a business with such high-quality characteristics and growth potential.”
A laptop and phone open to Google’s services in an everyday setting.
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in 7th position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 165 hedge fund portfolios held Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) at the end of the second quarter which was 165 in the previous quarter. In the first quarter Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) generated $80.5 billion in revenues, up 15% year-over-year (see the details here).While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) 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. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and shared the list of stocks Jim Cramer is bullish on. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was a significant contributor to the returns of multiple investment firms in Q2 2024 like Wedgewood Partners and Vulcan Value Partners. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2024 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.
