Palm Valley Capital Management, an investment management firm, released the “Palm Valley Capital Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, Palm Valley Capital Fund declined -0.09% outperforming the -0.58% decline in the S&P SmallCap 600 and slightly underperforming the 0.32% gain in the Morningstar Small Cap Total Return Index. The Fund faced losses on certain equity positions, but these were partly balanced out by gains from Treasury bill holdings. During the quarter the equity positions in the Fund reduced by 3.6%. Cash equivalents comprised 78% of the fund’s assets at the period’s end. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Palm Valley Capital Fund highlighted stocks like Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD), in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) is a short-to-medium, and long-haul truckload carrier. The one-month return of Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) was -8.19%, and its shares lost 18.92% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 6, 2025, Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) stock closed at $11.03 per share with a market capitalization of $866.212 million.
Palm Valley Capital Fund stated the following regarding Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“We acquired three new positions during the fourth quarter: Kelly Services (ticker: KELYA), Seaboard Corporation (ticker: SEB), and Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD). Heartland Express is another former Fund holding that we sold when the company made a significant debt-financed acquisition in mid-2022. The trucking business is highly cyclical, and the introduction of meaningful leverage to the investment case violated our risk parameters. However, Heartland has aggressively paid down borrowings in a short period of time, and the industry appears to be emerging from a cyclical trough. The stock is trading near a multiyear low.”
A busy truckload depot, with trucks and goods packed up for their journeys.
Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 15 hedge fund portfolios held Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) at the end of the third quarter which was 11 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) 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 Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD) and shared the list of stocks CEOs are currently purchasing. 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.