Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its “Artisan Value Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 10.78% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTLX, 10.76% by its Advisor Class: APDLX, and 10.75% by its Institutional Class: APHLX for the first quarter of 2021, all below the Russell 1000® Value Index that delivered an 11.26% return, but outperforming the Russell 1000® Index that gained 5.91% in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Artisan Partners, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX), and shared their insights on the company. FedEx Corporation is a Memphis, Tennessee-based delivery services company that currently has an $83.5 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, FDX delivered a 21.26% return, extending its 12-month gains to 142.70%. As of May 28, 2021, the stock closed at $314.81 per share.
Here is what Artisan Partners has to say about FedEx Corporation in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“Whatever products did make it off the line met a constrained logistics infrastructure, with commercial air capacity cut and ship cargo space at a premium. Then, in the event your dishwasher part actually made it to US waters, our ports were congested due to manpower shortages and COVID-19 protocols. When the goods were finally unloaded, it turns out trucking shortages caused a spike in ground rates! All this might be bad for your dinner parties, home décor or exercise goals, but it can be great for the middlemen. Middlemen like logistics expert FedEx.
FedEx provides global logistics services. It gets your dishwasher part on a truck, or that semiconductor chip on a plane. Surging demand for at-home deliveries during the pandemic boosted volumes and allowed management to push through price increases, keeping competitive with industry peers. The industry’s renewed pricing discipline was a welcome change, reflecting a broader commitment to earn better returns on invested capital. Despite a significant re-rating of the business over the last 12 months, FedEx remains attractive based on our margin of safety criteria.”
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Our calculations show that FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the first quarter of 2021, FedEx Corporation was in 63 hedge fund portfolios. FDX delivered a 20.12% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
