Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ second quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 10.45% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, 10.46% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and 10.52% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the second quarter of 2021, all below the Russell Midcap® Growth Index that delivered an 11.07% return, but outperforming the Russell Midcap® Index that was up by 7.50% for the same period. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their top bets for 2021.
In the Q2 2021 investor letter of Artisan Partners, the fund mentioned The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) and discussed its stance on the firm. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. is a Boston, Massachusetts-based beverage company with a $6.9 billion market capitalization. ABB delivered a -43.15% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -30.50%. The stock closed at $570.78 per share on September 1, 2021.
Here is what Artisan Partners has to say about The Boston Beer Company, Inc. in its Q2 2021 investor letter:
“The Boston Beer Company sells a focused portfolio of alcoholic beverage brands, and in recent years has emerged as one of the leaders in the fast-growing hard seltzer category. It continues to enhance the Truly seltzer brand—launching new flavors (iced tea, fruit punch) and gaining market share despite multiple new entrants. However, the growth of the hard seltzer category has been slowing in recent months, falling short of high investor expectations, which limits the company’s earnings upside and increases the risk of continued deceleration. While we remain confident in the management team, brand name and the company’s distribution capabilities/advantages, we have trimmed our position in favor of other opportunities as we monitor hard seltzer category trends for signs of reacceleration.”
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Based on our calculations, The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. SAM was in 42 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 29 funds in the previous quarter. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) delivered a -48.56% return in the past 3 months.
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
