Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The robust US economy, a general disinflation trend, and increased corporate earnings pushed the US equity markets to a new all-time high in the first quarter. The fund’s Investor Class ARTLX, Advisor Class APDLX, and Institutional Class APHLX returned 8.65%, 8.71%, and 8.71% respectively, in the first quarter compared to an 8.99% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the strategy to know its best picks in 2024.
Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks like Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM), in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) is a managed healthcare company with a market capitalization of $42.443 billion. The one-month return of Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) was 13.10%, and its shares lost 29.57% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 23, 2024, Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) stock closed at $352.22 per share.
Artisan Value Fund stated the following regarding Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“As the market has been grinding higher and higher, it likely comes as no surprise that value investors like us haven’t been very active in terms of new purchases. In Q1, we added one new name to the portfolio: Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM). Humana is a leading US managed health care company serving approximately 17 million members in its medical benefit plans, as well as nearly 5 million members in its specialty products. After a few years of benign costs, mainly related to lower utilization trends during COVID in which the managed care industry enjoyed expanding profits and strong growth, utilization has ticked higher, driving up costs. Due to the timing of annual negotiated repricing for Medicare Advantage plans in June, Humana won’t be able to adjust pricing higher until the following year. In the interim, this is problematic for near-term earnings. Naturally, this has weighed on Humana’s stock price. The main drivers for the business remain intact, however, and there are no large fundamental shifts impacting the industry’s long-term outlook. As opportunistic value investors, we took advantage of what we believe is a temporary air pocket in earnings to purchase shares trading at historic lows on most valuation metrics using our estimates of normalized results.”
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Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM)’s trailing 12 months revenue is $109.24 billion and year over year quarterly revenue growth rate is 10.70%. Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 74 hedge fund portfolios held Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) at the end of the first quarter which was 86 in the previous quarter.
In another article, we discussed Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) and shared the list of best insurance dividend stocks to invest in. Baron Health Care Fund sold its stake in Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) in the first quarter 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.
