Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Partners Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Baron Partners Fund demonstrated a strong performance in the final quarter of 2024 and significantly exceeded the Index’s returns over the previous year and outperformed the Russell Midcap Growth Index in the quarter. The Fund rose 27.05% (institutional Shares) in the quarter significantly outperforming advances in the Index and the large cap dominated Russell 3000 Index (the Market Index), which gained 8.14% and 2.63%, respectively. The Fund gained 33.08% in 2024 while the Index and the Market Index returned 22.10% and 23.81%, respectively. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
In its fourth quarter 2024 investor letter, Baron Partners Fund emphasized stocks such as CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP). CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is an information, analytics, and online marketplace services provider for commercial and residential property markets. The one-month return of CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) was 0.28%, and its shares lost 9.02% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On February 14, 2025, CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) stock closed at $74.06 per share with a market capitalization of $30.362 billion.
Baron Partners Fund stated the following regarding CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is the leading provider of information and marketing services to the commercial real estate (CRE) industry. Shares detracted from performance due to mixed net new sales performance in its residential product. We remain encouraged by the traffic growth and growing brand awareness for the company’s Homes.com platform. We are optimistic that sales momentum will improve as the company builds out a dedicated residential sales force, enhances its customer targeting, and benefits from potential changes in multiple listing services practices. We believe performance in CoStar’s non-residential business remains strong, and we expect to see better organic growth as the CRE market improves and salespeople return to focus exclusively on a single product. We believe the value of CoStar’s core non-residential business exceeds the current share price, implying that investors are ascribing negative value to the residential opportunity.”
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CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 43 hedge fund portfolios held CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) at the end of the third quarter which was 42 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) 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 CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) and shared Andvari Associates’ views on the company. In the previous quarter CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) detracted from Baron Asset Fund’s performance. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.