Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Discovery Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, the fund appreciated 6.20% (Institutional Shares), outperforming the 4.50% return for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the fund returned 16.28% compared to the index’s 15.15% return. Given the challenging start in the first half of the year, the fund was pleased with the outperformance of the fund in 2024. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Discovery Fund highlighted stocks like Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) in its Q4 2024 investor letter. Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) engages in the designing, engineering, and manufacturing of process technologies and equipment for gas and liquid molecules. The one-month return of Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) was 11.98%, and its shares gained 95.43% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 23, 2024, Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) stock closed at $216.01 per share with a market capitalization of $9.248 billion.
Baron Discovery Fund stated the following regarding Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) is a global leader in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of process and storage technologies and equipment for gas and liquid handling. Shares of Chart rose during the quarter as the company reported strong financial results, importantly with free cash flow ahead of investor expectations. The fundamentals for the business continue to be very strong, with record revenue, backlog, and margins every quarter in 2024 and a book-to-bill ratio above one. The stock had been “in the penalty box” for self-inflicted issues, with management setting too-high expectations and continuing to need to cut them back, but this quarter showed Chart has finally set more achievable expectations and we believe it is set up for strong execution into 2025. Chart is unique in its breadth of technology and solutions serving long-duration secular growth markets (liquid natural gas, hydrogen, carbon capture, water treatment, and more) with a mid-20% (and improving) EBITDA margin profile and with revenue growing double digits. As the company continues to grow and execute its operational excellence plan, we believe it will earn a more premium valuation, which combined with its strong earnings growth profile will drive significant near- and long-term upside in the stock.”
An extensive industrial gas facility with many storage tanks.
Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 40 hedge fund portfolios held Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) at the end of the third quarter which was 47 in the previous quarter. In the third quarter, Chart Industries, Inc.’s (NYSE:GTLS) orders grew 5.4% and revenues of $1.06 billion increased 22.4% as compared to the third quarter 2023 pro forma. While we acknowledge the potential of Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) and shared Aristotle Small Cap Equity Strategy’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2024 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.