Pershing Square Holdings Ltd, an investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2020 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A net return of 70.2% was recorded by the fund for the year-end of 2020, outperforming its S&P 500 benchmark that delivered an 18.4% return in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Pershing Square Holdings, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HLT) and shared their insights on the company. Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. is a McLean, Virginia-based multinational hospitality company that currently has a $33.8 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, HLT delivered a 9.34% return, impressively extending its 12-month gains to 110.25%. As of April 01, 2021, the stock closed at $121.65 per share.
Here is what Pershing Square Holdings has to say about Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“Hilton is a high-quality, asset light, high-margin business with significant long-term growth potential, led by a superb management team. The hotel industry was one of the most negatively impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic set in, Hilton’s management team deftly navigated a challenging situation and took decisive actions to right size Hilton’s cost structure for the current economic environment, and fortify its balance sheet. As a result, Hilton managed through the pandemic and positioned the company to generate enhanced margins, improved cash flows and returns, once the business recovers to pre-COVID-19 demand levels.
Hilton’s systemwide occupancy bottomed at 13% in April 2020, but rebounded to approximately 40% during Q3 and Q4 as COVID-19 became better understood and travel restrictions lifted. Positive demand momentum experienced in the summer and early fall were disrupted in November and December due to rising COVID-19 cases and tightening travel restrictions.
Hilton management expects a more pronounced and sustained recovery to commence in the second half of 2021, particularly as the COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out more broadly, driven by increased leisure demand and a rebound in business travel. Management’s conviction is driven by a number of factors which include: (1) pent-up leisure travel demand, (2) large amounts of unspent consumer savings, (3) large corporations indicating a desire to resume business travel, (4) improving business transient booking trends, (5) proprietary survey work in which 80% of respondents express a desire to travel, and a substantially better second half of 2021 group booking calendar.
Despite significant headwinds, Hilton continued to execute on its long-term strategy, and opened 47,400 net new rooms in 2020 (+5%). Hilton’s pipeline expanded 3% year-over-year to 397,000 rooms, or 39% of the existing room footprint, 51% of which are currently under construction. We believe Hilton will continue to grow its market share over time given independent hotels’ increased interest in seeking an affiliation with global brands, particularly in the wake of the pandemic.
Hilton is well positioned to thrive as the recovery sets in due to its best-in-class management team, portfolio of great brands, dominant market position, capital-light economic model, deep development pipeline and strong balance sheet. Hilton is in the early stages of a multi-year recovery, which we believe will deliver long-term earnings that are meaningfully greater than pre-2020 levels.”
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Our calculations show that Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HLT) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. was in 60 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 57 funds in the third quarter. HLT delivered a 9.34% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
