Madison Funds, an independent investment management firm, published its fourth quarter 2020 “Madison Small Cap Fund” investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 27.61% was recorded by the fund’s Class Y shares in the fourth quarter of 2020, outperforming its Russell 2500 benchmark that had a 27.41% gain, but below its Russell 2000 index that delivered a 31.37% return in the same period. You can view the complete list of the fund’s Average Annual Total Returns and its top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Madison Small Cap Fund, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Catalent, Inc. (NYSE: CTLT) and emphasized their views on the company. Catalent, Inc. is a Somerset, Franklin Township, New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company that currently has a $17.6 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, CTLT delivered a -0.74% return, while its 12-month gains are up 111.16%. As of March 26, 2021, the stock closed at $103.30 per share.
Here is what Madison Small Cap Fund has to say about Catalent, Inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“Healthcare continued its streak of underperformance in the fourth quarter. The biotech industry component of the Russell 2000 was up 34% for the quarter and 53% for the year. While we have become more open to investing in this space where appropriate, we prefer molecular diagnostics given less regulatory risk and better revenue diversification. With the new administration comes a shift in healthcare philosophy. We believe that further access to care and coverage expansion will benefit some parts of the sector. However, the risk of further reimbursement cuts, particularly in pharmaceuticals, will bear monitoring. We would note that one of our strong outperformers, Catalent, benefited from increased demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This stock returned 84% in 2020. While we think the fundamentals here are still strong, the stock has grown into a midcap.”
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Our calculations show that Catalent, Inc. (NYSE: CTLT) 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, Catalent, Inc. was in 35 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 40 funds in the third quarter. CTLT delivered a -1.91% 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.
