Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. US stocks recovered from brief periods of volatility to hit fresh all-time highs in Q3 due to incoming economic data supporting a soft landing, US inflation continuing to slow, and positive underlying profit growth. Against this backdrop, the portfolio generated a solid absolute return but trailed the Russell 1000® Value Index. Due to the absence of real estate and utility holdings, the switch to bond proxies was a performance headwind. The fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 6.65%, 6.69%, and 6.69% respectively, in the third quarter compared to a 9.43% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2024.
Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks like Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) in the Q3 2024 investor letter. Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) is a discount retailer, that provides various merchandise products. The one-month return of Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) was -6.25%, and its shares lost 34.83% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 13, 2024, Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) stock closed at $76.78 per share with a market capitalization of $16.885 billion.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
Shares of discount retailer Dollar General sold off after the company reported a weak set of results that included tepid same-store sales results, a decline in gross margins and a drop in earnings per share, causing the company to slash its full-year sales and earnings outlook. A combination of execution issues, competitive pressures and an increasingly constrained lower income consumer are hurting sales growth. Additionally, margins are under pressure due to labor costs, shrink and markdowns. Some of the issues are self-inflicted. After years of focusing on store growth to drive the top line, store standards have suffered. Addressing store standards is needed to turn around flagging traffic, comps and customer satisfaction. Additionally, its strategy to grow the share of sales that come from nonconsumables hasn’t achieved its objectives as these products have tended to sit on store shelves, leading to more promotions and inventory write-downs. Turning the business around will take time, but the stock price is now back to 2016 levels, and multiple valuation metrics are the cheapest in the stock’s history.
A busy shopping aisle filled with discounted items in a retail store.
Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 42 hedge fund portfolios held Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) at the end of the second quarter which was 49 in the previous quarter. Dollar General Corporation’s (NYSE:DG) net sales increased 4.2% in the second quarter of 2024 to $10.2 billion compared to net sales of $9.8 billion in Q2 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) 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 Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) and shared the list of oversold blue-chip stocks to buy. Dollar General Corporation (NYSE:DG) was the worst performer of Heartland Mid Cap Value Fund in the third quarter of 2024, due to its downward revision of earnings guidance. 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.