River Road Asset Management, an investment management company released its “River Road Small-Mid Cap Value Fund” Q4 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, AMG River Road Small Cap Value Fund (Class N) returned 3.67% compared to -0.26% returns for the Russell 2500TM Value Index. For the year 2024, the fund returned 12.46% compared to the Index return of 10.98%. For more information on the fund’s best picks in 2024, please check its top five holdings.
In its fourth quarter 2024 investor letter, River Road Small-Mid Cap Value Fund emphasized stocks such as Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST). Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) is an integrated retail electricity and power generation company. The one-month return of Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) was -3.65%, and its shares gained 65.73% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On April 1, 2025, Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) stock closed at $122.24 per share with a market capitalization of $41.581 billion.
River Road Small-Mid Cap Value Fund stated the following regarding Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Another positive contributor was Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST), an independent producer and retailer of electricity, and the second-largest owner of nuclear power assets in the United States. Like Talen (see writeup above), Vistra benefited from the record auction clearing price this past July at PJM. In August, VST released 2026 EBITDA guidance of at least $6B, which is 50% higher than 2023 results. Near the end of the quarter, nuclear peer Constellation Energy announced a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Microsoft® at its decommissioned Three Mile Island nuclear plant. The news sparked a rally in nuclear power plant owners as the indicated market price for the PPA was above $100/MWh and further confirms the strength of demand for reliable and clean baseload generation. VST’s entire nuclear fleet is fully operational and encompasses six GW across Texas and Ohio. The market anticipates a similar deal could be around the corner as the stock’s multiple continued to expand. We trimmed the position as the stock approached our assessed value.”
Solar panel workers installing a new farm for clean energy generation.
Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) is in 28th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 120 hedge fund portfolios held Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 97 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) 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.
We covered Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) in another article, where we shared the list of best US stocks to buy for foreign investors. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and A New Dawn Is Coming to US Stocks.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.