Baron Funds, an investment management firm, released its “Baron Durable Advantage Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund advanced 10.9% (Institutional Shares) in the first quarter compared to a 10.6% return for the Fund’s benchmark, the S&P 500 Index. The strong US economy led the fund’s quarterly gains. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Durable Advantage Fund highlighted stocks like CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) offers information, analytics, and online marketplace services to commercial and residential property markets. CoStar Group, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:CSGP) one-month return was -14.38%, and its shares lost 4.67% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 31, 2024, CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) stock closed at $78.17 per share with a market capitalization of $31.931 billion.
Baron Durable Advantage Fund stated the following regarding CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Lastly, we initiated a position in CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP), the leading provider of information, analytics, and marketing services to the real estate industry. CoStar initially focused on serving the domestic commercial real estate industry and built a comprehensive proprietary database of essential data to help participants buy, sell, and lease properties. The company has since expanded its focus to offer products and services to multi-family, industrial, commercial land, mixed-use, and hospitality end-markets across North America and Western Europe.
Today, the company’s non-residential operations generate over $2 billion of recurring revenue with EBITDA margins in excess of 40%. We expect this business to compound its revenue at a low to mid-teens rate as the company launches new products, upsells existing customers, raises prices, and diversifies its customer base to owners, lenders, and tenants. We see profit and cash flow growing at an even faster rate given the low marginal costs inherent in CoStar’s business model. We think that free cash flow from this business can double over the next five years, which implies a similar return for the stock…” (Click here to read the full text)
An elegant residential building set against the modern skyline.
CoStar Group, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:CSGP) first quarter 2024 revenue was $656 million, up 12% from Q1 2023. CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 40 hedge fund portfolios held CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) at the end of the first quarter which was 36 in the previous quarter.
In another article, we discussed CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) and shared the list of biggest real estate companies in the US in 2024. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 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.
