Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The third quarter saw strength in small cap stocks, particularly in July when the return on the Russell 2000 Index was 10.2%. In the quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned 9.02%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of 9.04%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned 9.06%, compared to a return of 8.41% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. Outperformance of the fund in the quarter was driven by positive security selection within health care and consumer discretionary sectors. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Small Cap Fund highlighted stocks like Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) designs, develops, and operates a web-based social media management platform. The one-month return of Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) was 20.12%, and its shares lost 41.70% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 11, 2024, Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) stock closed at $34.80 per share with a market capitalization of $1.997 billion.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Along with e.l.f. Beauty, we ended our investment campaigns in Advanced Drainage Systems, AppFolio and Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) during the quarter. Sprout Social is an industry-leading platform empowering businesses of all sizes to leverage social media for marketing, customer care, intelligence gathering, public relations and collecting product feedback, among other use cases. Our thesis was the company would benefit from the growing importance of social media as a way for brands to connect directly with customers, especially as more products are purchased online and through social platforms. While we believe Sprout Social remains a compelling business, frustrating execution missteps and management changes led us to move on in favor of higher conviction ideas.”
A marketing manager in a boardroom making decisions about the company’s social media management platform.
Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 20 hedge fund portfolios held Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) at the end of the third quarter which was 16 in the previous quarter. Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) reported $102.6 million in revenues in the third quarter, representing year-over-year growth of 20%. While we acknowledge the potential of Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) 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 Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) and shared the list of hidden gem AI stocks. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.