Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Select Equity Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund returned -0.4% compared to a 4.28% return for the S&P 500 Index and a -2.2% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. Year-to-date the fund increased 10.4% compared to 15.3% and 6.6% return for the indexes. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Select Equity Fund highlighted stocks like Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) is a distributor of healthcare products and services to dental practitioners, laboratories, physician practices, and ambulatory surgery centers, government, institutional healthcare clinics, and other alternate care clinics. The one-month return of Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) was -1.63%, and its shares lost 8.70% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 16, 2024, Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) stock closed at $69.79 per share with a market capitalization of $8.843 billion.
Artisan Select Equity Fund stated the following regarding Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“The biggest detractors from performance during the quarter were Harley-Davidson, Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) and Expedia. Henry Schein declined 15% during the quarter due primarily to weak traffic trends in the overall dental market. In our view, the concerns around near-term traffic trends are misplaced. The long-term trends in the dental industry are favorable. Around 90% of US dentists are currently operating at full capacity, and 50% of the US population still isn’t regularly seeing a dentist. We see penetration opportunities and demographic tailwinds in the US and internationally. And while there will be puts and takes, the dental market should grow nicely over time.
Schein’s business is performing well. It seems to have recovered from the cyberattack in late 2023. Most importantly, it is making good progress on its strategy to shift its business mix toward its own branded products, which have higher growth and margins. This shift benefits Schein by improving its margins, increasing its value to customers and giving it more leverage with suppliers. This year it expects to grow earnings 10%–15%. As it transforms from a pure distributor of third-party products into a hybrid distributor/manufacturer, we believe it will have more control over its financial model and ability to drive attractive profit growth in a variety of market environments. We find this combination very attractive for a company trading at 11X–12X earnings.”
A close-up of a patient’s mouth, the dental products from the company in view.
Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 32 hedge fund portfolios held Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) at the end of the second quarter which was 25 in the previous quarter. In the second quarter, Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) recorded $3.1 billion in global sales, a 1.1% increase compared to Q2 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) 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 Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) and shared Fiduciary Management Inc.’s views on the company. Artisan Select Equity Fund established a position in Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) during Q3 2023. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.
