We recently published a list of Louis Navellier’s 10 New Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) stands against other Louis Navellier’s new stock picks.
Navellier & Associates is an independent money management firm founded in 1987 by renowned growth analyst Louis Navellier. Based in Reno, Nevada, the firm has more than thirty years of experience serving both individual and institutional clients through a disciplined, style-consistent investment approach. The firm’s mission is to maximize returns while managing excessive risk, offering customized portfolio strategies that incorporate a proprietary blend of quantitative and fundamental analysis. Navellier’s investment philosophy centers around identifying and exploiting inefficiencies in the market to uncover high-potential growth stocks. Unlike market indexes and firms that mimic market indexes, Navellier & Associates focuses on outperforming them, resulting in portfolios with low correlation to benchmarks, increased diversification, and reduced risk.
At the heart of Navellier’s investment process is a rigorous three-step, bottom-up stock selection methodology. The first step involves applying a proprietary quantitative screening process to evaluate market and individual stock statistics, specifically measuring reward through alpha and risk through standard deviation. This process narrows the investment options to stocks that rank in the upper percentiles for their risk/reward metrics. In the second step, fundamental analysis is used to identify stocks with exceptional profit margins, robust earnings growth, and forward-looking, reasonable price-to-earnings ratios. Finally, a proprietary optimization model allocates stocks within the portfolio to maximize alpha while minimizing volatility, ensuring that each portfolio is well-diversified across multiple sectors and industries. These strategies are particularly well-suited for long-term investors seeking steady returns in both bull and bear markets.
Louis Navellier himself brings over three decades of expertise to the firm. Since 1980, he has published quantitative research on growth stocks and remains a leading voice in the investment community. As the Founder, Chairman, Chief Investment Officer, and Chief Compliance Officer of Navellier & Associates, he continues to oversee the same portfolios he helped launch. His investment insights have earned him frequent appearances on CNBC, Fox Business News, and regular quotes in leading financial outlets such as Bloomberg and MarketWatch. He has been featured in major publications like Forbes, Fortune, Barron’s, and The Wall Street Journal, and profiled in books such as Secrets of the Investment All-Stars and Investing Under Fire. Today, the firm manages over $1 billion in private and institutional accounts and remains a sought-after resource for high-net-worth individuals and institutions alike.
Navellier & Associates offers tailored portfolio reviews, designed to help clients make sound financial decisions aligned with their preferences, individual goals, and risk tolerance. These reviews include a comprehensive portfolio analysis, risk assessment, and personalized investment recommendations. Portfolios managed by Navellier range from $100,000 to over $100 million, and all recommendations are made on a person-by-person basis. This level of customization underscores the firm’s belief that every investor is unique and deserves a strategy that reflects their personal financial objectives.
In addition to its financial expertise, the Navellier team is composed of passionate professionals who share common interests and life goals with their clients. From hiking and skiing to golfing and parenting, the firm’s staff brings a personal touch to its services, fostering genuine connections with investors. Navellier & Associates is deeply committed to providing not only top-tier financial management but also exceptional client service, innovative investment tools, and cutting-edge market research. With a homegrown foundation and a global outlook, Navellier continues to help clients achieve long-term financial security through disciplined, adaptive, and data-driven investment strategies.
As of its most recent 13F filing for the fourth quarter of 2024, Navellier & Associates reported managing approximately $834 million in securities. The firm’s top ten holdings account for 29.42% of this portfolio, reflecting its concentrated yet carefully optimized investment strategy grounded in systematic analysis and decades of market experience.
Our Methodology
We searched through Navellier & Associates’ Q4 2024 13F filings to identify the new stock picks that the firm invested in during the fourth quarter of the year. From the resultant data, we ranked the equities based on the hedge fund’s stake value in each holding. Additionally, we have mentioned the hedge fund sentiment around each stock using data from 1,009 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
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ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders as of Q4: 27
Navellier & Associates’ Equity Stake: $5.02 Million
ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) is a global analytics and digital solutions company that provides services to a wide range of industries, including insurance, healthcare, banking and financial services, media, and retail. The company reported strong financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024, with revenue reaching $481.4 million, representing a 16.3% increase compared to the same period in the previous year. Earnings per share (EPS) rose to $0.31 from $0.24 in Q4 2023.
For the full year 2024, ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) delivered revenue of $1.84 billion, reflecting a 12.7% increase year-over-year, while EPS for the year climbed to $1.21, up from $1.10 in 2023. The company’s business segments showed strong performance, with the Insurance segment generating $162.0 million in Q4 2024, an increase from $139.1 million in the same quarter the year before. The Analytics segment also posted notable growth, with revenue rising to $207.7 million from $182.0 million in Q4 2023.
In addition to its financial achievements, ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) made significant operational advancements. The company launched EXLerate.AI, an artificial intelligence platform designed to improve operational efficiency and scalability across its business processes. EXL also expanded its client base, securing 17 new clients in the fourth quarter alone, bringing the total number of new clients for 2024 to 69.
Looking ahead, ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) has issued optimistic guidance for 2025, projecting revenue between $2.025 billion and $2.060 billion, reflecting growth of 10% to 12% on a reported basis and 11% to 13% on a constant currency basis. The company also expects adjusted diluted EPS to range from $1.83 to $1.89, indicating an increase of 11% to 14% from 2024.
ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS)’s strong financial performance and growth potential have attracted the attention of notable investors, effectively placing it in the list of Louis Navellier’s new stock picks. In the December 2024 quarter, Navellier & Associates invested over $5 million in the company, acquiring 113,037 shares, signaling confidence in EXL’s long-term prospects.
Polen Global SMID Company Growth stated the following regarding ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“We initiated a position in ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS), a business process outsourcing company that we think has become a leader in data services over time. Exlservice is a diversified business with 95% customer renewal rates and four-to-five-year contracts. While the work is not glamorous, the company is experiencing strong demand from customers attempting to determine how to best clean up and structure data to participate in the next stages of digital transformation, including generative Al (“GenAl”). We expect this strong customer demand to continue. Many companies are faced with significant basic blocking to benefit from GenAl successfully. Simultaneously, the company invests heavily in developing GenAl-enabled tools and recently announced partnerships with Microsoft and AWS (Amazon Web Services is’ Amazon’s comprehensive cloud computing platform) to co develop Al solutions and accelerate go-to-market plans.”
Overall, EXLS ranks 3rd on our list of Louis Navellier’s new stock picks. While we acknowledge the potential of EXLS, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than EXLS but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
