Distillate Capital Partners LLC, an investment management firm, published its second-quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. Through the sharp sell-off in the first half of 2022, Distillate’s U.S. FSV strategy held up better than the overall market with a decline of 15.80% net of fees vs. a 19.96% decline for the S&P 500 Index. For the same period, Distillate’s Intl. FSV strategy performed roughly in line with the iShares MSCI ACWI ex-US ETF, posting a total return of -18.07% net of fees versus -18.00% for the benchmark. Meanwhile, Distillate’s U.S. SQV’s 2022 first half total return after fees of -17.22% was better than the total return for the iShares Russell 2000 ETF of -23.48% and the iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF’s total return of -17.43%. Go over the fund’s top 5 positions to have a glimpse of its finest picks for 2022.
In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Distillate Capital mentioned Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 1976, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a Cupertino, California-based multinational technology company with a $2.4 trillion market capitalization. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) delivered a -15.62% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 4.91%. The stock closed at $149.84 per share on September 29, 2022.
Here is what Distillate Capital has to say about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q2 2022 investor letter:
“Apple was largest new purchase in the quarter, at a 2% weight. Apple underperformed the overall market last quarter,and given very minimal debt, this price weakness translated into a commensurate fall in its enterprise value. For stocks with higher debt levels, it takes a disproportionately bigger market cap drop to achieve the same valuation improvementand this is a key reason we avoid highly leveraged names where significant price weakness can be experienced during a revaluation process. Alongside this decline in EV for Apple, its estimated free cash flows have risen steadily throughout the year. This contrast between a falling enterprise value and rising free cash flow, which is highlighted in Figure 12, made the stock sufficiently better valued such that it entered the portfolio. While Apple’s valuation is now attractive enough to warrant inclusion in the portfolio, it still ranks in the bottom quartile of the portfolio’s holdings and so the stock’s initiating weight is capped at a 2%. This contrasts significantly with Apple’s near-7% position in the S&P 500 benchmark,and reflects both our preference to avoid too much concentration risk as well our goal of ensuring that the overall portfolio valuation is as attractive as possible while balancing characteristics of stability and low indebtedness.”
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Our calculations show that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) ranks 9th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was in 128 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2022, compared to 131 funds in the previous quarter. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) delivered a 7.62% return in the past 3 months.
In September 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q2 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
