Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Small Cap Fund” second quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. Baron Small Cap Fund (the “Fund”) was down 18.60% (Institutional Shares) in the second quarter. The Fund modestly outperformed the Russell 2000 Growth Index, which was down 19.25% for the period, but lagged the S&P 500 Index, which was down 16.10%. Year-to-date, the Fund is down 31.36%, which trailed the Russell 2000 Growth Index and the S&P 500 Index, which were down 29.45% and 19.96%, respectively. Go over the fund’s top 5 positions to have a glimpse of its finest picks for 2022.
In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Baron Small Cap Fund mentioned Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 2010, Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) is a Chicago, Illinois-based software company with a $3.6 billion market capitalization. Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) delivered a -24.85% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -44.98%. The stock closed at $68.15 per share on September 12, 2022.
Here is what Baron Small Cap Fund has to say about Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) in its Q2 2022 investor letter:
“Sprout Social, Inc. provides cloud-based social media management software. Sprout’s industry-leading platform empowers businesses of all sizes to leverage social media–Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok–for marketing, customer care, public relations, business intelligence, and collecting product feedback, among other use cases.
Brands are increasingly going directly to consumers as more products are purchased online and through social platforms, and recent developments around first party/IDFA are likely to augment this trend. Sprout is the solution to consolidate and centralize the complexity of social channels into an elegant, integrated platform that can be leveraged across an organization. Sprout continues to differentiate its platform through its clean user interface, easy onboarding process, and single code base.
The company serves 32,000 customers across 100 countries, and 90% of the leads are inbound with a 30-day free trial, which highlights the value of the product. Recent account wins include IBM Watson, Department of Labor, and Kraft Heinz. Sprout’s home-grown, single-code base enables the company to innovate and deliver feature enhancements to all customers at once, a distinct advantage versus others with customized codes, heavy professional services requirements, and long sales cycles…” (Click here to see the full text)
Our calculations show that Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) was in 22 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2022, compared to 30 funds in the previous quarter. Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) delivered a 50.18% return in the past 3 months.
In February 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Sprout Social, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPT) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q2 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
