Bretton Capital Management, an investment management company, released “Bretton Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The market is experiencing a period of high returns, with two consecutive years of around 25% returns and 15 years of mid-teens returns, prompting investors to be cautious. The average stock market return is around 9-10% per year, historically, based on corporate earnings growth and dividends and buybacks. The 20 companies the fund owns are well-positioned and expected to perform well. Against this backdrop, in the fourth quarter, the fund returned -0.98% compared to 2.41% return for the S&P 500. 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, Bretton Fund emphasized stocks such as Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP). Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) is a heavy construction material and light building materials supplier. The one-month return of Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) was -2.81%, and its shares gained 3.39% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On February 18, 2025, Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) stock closed at $250.52 per share with a market capitalization of $8.4 billion.
Bretton Fund stated the following regarding Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Our most recent addition, Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP), saw strong demand in divisions. The cement industry in the US continues to be severely capacity constrained, leading to cement being effectively “sold out” each year and cement prices rising 12%. Its wallboard business declined slightly from the slower real estate market. Overall, earnings per share increased 9%, and we are up 8% so far on the stock.”
A close-up of limestone being mined from a quarry.
Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 31 hedge fund portfolios held Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) at the end of the third quarter which was 28 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) 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 Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) and shared the list of cheap value stocks to invest in, according to Seth Klarman. Bretton Fund expressed a positive outlook on Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) in the previous quarter. 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.