Artisan Partners Limited Partnership, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ fourth quarter 2020 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 16.82% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, 16.87% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and 16.89% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the fourth quarter of 2020, all below its Russell Midcap Growth Benchmark that delivered a 19.02% return and its Russel Midcap Index that was up by 19.91% in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Artisan Mid Cap Fund, in their Q4 2020 investor letter, mentioned Roper Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ROP) and emphasized their views on the company. Roper Technologies, Inc. is a Florida-based diversified industrial company that currently has a $41.3 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, ROP delivered a -8.71% return, but its 12-month gains are up by 31.18%. As of March 17, 2021, the stock closed at $393.55 per share.
Here is what Artisan Mid Cap Fund has to say about Roper Technologies, Inc. in their Q4 2020 investor letter:
“We pared our exposure to Roper Technologies. Roper Technologies is a diversified industrials company that produces niche industrial technologies and business software solutions. The company is benefiting from a multi-decade shift away from cyclical capital-intensive industrial markets toward high-return recurring revenue businesses such as software. The company recently closed its acquisition of Vertafore, a provider of workflow SaaS solutions— providing analytics, management ERP systems and compliance software—to property and casualty insurers. We have long admired Roper’s ability to compound cash flows based on organic growth and smart acquisitions, but as the stock has appreciated into the large-cap universe, and as the Vertafore deal will require a period of debt paydown (instead of acquisitions), we viewed this as a natural point to begin exiting our position in favor of newer ideas.”
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Our calculations show that Roper Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ROP) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Roper Technologies, Inc. was in 40 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 50 funds in the third quarter. ROP delivered a -7.41% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
