Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Health Care Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. The Fund performed roughly in line with the Benchmark, during a challenging quarter for the larger health care industry. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund declined 9.58% (Institutional Shares) in the quarter compared to a 9.75% decline for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index (benchmark) and a 2.63% gain for the Russell 3000 Index (the Index). For the full year 2024, the fund appreciated 1.55% compared to 3.48% and 23.81% gains for the indexes. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
In its fourth quarter 2024 investor letter, Baron Health Care Fund emphasized stocks such as AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN). AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) is a biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, and manufacturers prescription medicine. The one-month return of AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) was 7.59%, and its shares gained 15.09% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On February 19, 2025, AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) stock closed at $73.81 per share with a market capitalization of $230.61 billion.
Baron Health Care Fund stated the following regarding AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Poor performance from AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) also factored into the underperformance in pharmaceuticals. The company is currently dealing with several ongoing investigations into employees in its China business. We believe shares are undervalued relative to what remains an attractive long-term growth outlook driven by indication expansion for current products (Tagrisso and Enhertu) as well as a range of pipeline assets.”
A pharmacy worker distributing prescription medicines to patientsreceiving treatment for oncology, cardiovascular, renal, metabolism and respiratory diseases.
AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 55 hedge fund portfolios held AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 42 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) 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 AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) and shared the list of best foreign dividend stocks to buy according to analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.