Meridian Funds, managed by ArrowMark Partners, released its “Meridian Contrarian Fund” third quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, the fund returned -3.28% net compared to -2.82% return for the Russell 2500 Index. At the same time, the fund outperformed its secondary benchmark, the Russell 2500 Value Index, which returned -4.50%. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2022.
Meridian Funds highlighted stocks like AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) in the Q3 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in Pembroke, Bermuda, AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) provides insurance and reinsurance products. On December 7, 2022, AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) stock closed at $57.04 per share. One-month return of AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) was 3.35% and its shares gained 9.00% of their value over the last 52 weeks. AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) has a market capitalization of $4.829 billion.
Meridian Funds made the following comment about AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:
“AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) is a leading provider of specialty insurance and reinsurance. We initiated a position in AXIS during the third quarter of 2020. At the time, its stock was trading at a significant discount to peers due to years of chasing growth through aggressive underwriting that increased risk and hurt financial results. Management recognized this issue and, in 2018, began to pursue a strategy to improve underwriting and reconfigure the company’s exposures to reduce risk and produce lessvolatile results. This included hiring new underwriting management and significant data and systems investments. We believe this strategy is working and should lead to more consistent earnings growth and a higher multiple. AXIS has strongly outperformed the market year to date, but the stock weakened during the quarter despite rising earnings expectations. The company paused stock buybacks to shore up capital ratios that were affected by higher interest rates and, near the end of the quarter, the stock was hit by concerns about damages from hurricane Ian. We believe the pause on stock buybacks was prudent and short-term, and early indications are that hurricane damages are manageable. This has enabled the stock to recoup some of its losses. AXIS trades at roughly book value compared to high-performing peers at more than 1.5x earnings. We believe, with consistent performance, this gap will close and combine with earnings growth to drive share price appreciation. We maintained our position during the quarter.”
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AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 20 hedge fund portfolios held AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) at the end of the third quarter, which was 16 in the previous quarter.
We discussed AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) in another article and shared the best dividend stocks with over 10 years of dividend increases. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2022 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.
