White Brook Capital Partners, an investment management firm, released its fourth-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. White Brook Capital’s middle capitalization focused fund had a forgettable year in 2024. With the announcement of fourth-quarter earnings and positive 2025 outlook by the fund’s portfolio companies, fortunes have turned around thus far in 2025. The portfolio’s dominant theme is that it owns quality businesses in sectors that for one reason or another are out of favor. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
White Brook Capital Partners highlighted stocks like Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO), in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) is a US-based restaurants operator. The one-month return of Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) was 39.09%, and its shares lost 10.79% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 24, 2025, Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) stock closed at $12.49 per share with a market capitalization of $782.479 million.
White Brook Capital Partners stated the following regarding Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) is up over 20% so far this year. On January 14th, the Company preliminarily announced same store sales growth and gave supportive guidance for 2025 driving much of that stock improvement. But the even more important news should have been picked up during 2024, and was simply overlooked. During the third quarter, they announced they would explore financing the building for their new stores, rather than leasing the ground, but financing the building themselves. The move meant that the company can grow more quickly while also allowing for free cash flow after growth investments to begin to flow to the bottom line. This is exactly the scenario outlined in my bull case write up last year. We were obviously too early in establishing our position in 2024, but this is the setup that we outlined in our thesis, and one that, as they execute, should prove lucrative.”
A customer biting into a freshly prepared char-grilled burger, with crinkle-cut French fries and a chopped salad in the background.
Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 12 hedge fund portfolios held Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) at the end of the third quarter which was 16 in the previous quarter. During the Q3, Portillo’s Inc.’s (NASDAQ:PTLO) revenues were $178.3 million reflecting an increase of 6.9% compared Q3 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) 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 Portillo’s Inc. (NASDAQ:PTLO) and shared Middle Coast Investing’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.