Baron Health Care Fund Reduced AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) on Competition Concerns

Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Health Care Fund” first quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The first quarter was difficult for the fund, as it failed to participate in the broader market rally and declined 3.69% compared to the 3.27% decline for the benchmark Russell 3000 Health Care Index and a 7.50% increase for the S&P 500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.

Baron Health Care Fund highlighted stocks like AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom, AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) is a biopharmaceutical company. On May 17, 2023, AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) stock closed at $74.70 per share. One-month return of AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) was 0.23%, and its shares gained 15.74% of their value over the last 52 weeks. AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) has a market capitalization of $231.547 billion.

Baron Health Care Fund made the following comment about AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:

“We reduced our position in AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) ahead of a clinical data read-out of a competitor drug that would compete with one of the company’s important drugs.”

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AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 42 hedge fund portfolios held AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 44 in the previous quarter.

We discussed AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) in another article and shared the list of biggest immunotherapy companies in the world. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 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.