Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund increased 12.6% (Institutional Shares) in the first quarter compared to an 11.4% gain for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and a 10.6% increase for the S&P 500 Index. Despite higher interest rates, the US economy continues to surpass expectations. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, offers various platforms and services operating through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments. The one-month return of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was 1.52%, and its shares gained 40.58% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 24, 2024, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock closed at $176.33 per share with a market capitalization of $2.17 trillion.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we initiated a position in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, the world’s largest search and online advertising company. Alphabet has over 90% market share in its core Google search business, it owns the world’s leading video platform, YouTube (which has over 2 billion users), a competitive cloud service provider, Google Cloud, a leading ad network, and optionality in a number of smaller subsidiaries like the autonomous vehicle company, Waymo.
Google’s core search business continues to grow at a solid clip, and we believe it could structurally earn much higher margins than it does today as the company increases operating efficiency. Google Cloud should also continue growing in the healthy double digits for years to come given the relatively early stage of cloud adoption with $597 billion total cloud spending14 in 2023 out of worldwide IT spending of $4.7 trillion15, or around 13%. Additionally, YouTube has a long runway for growth, driven by the growing adoption of connected TV and the shift of advertising dollars from linear TV…” (Click here to read the full text)
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Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) trailing 12-month revenue is 318.15 billion and its year over year quarterly growth rate is 15.40%. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in 7th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 165 hedge fund portfolios held Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) at the end of the first quarter which was 166 in the previous quarter.
In another article, we discussed Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and shared the list of best quantum computing stocks to invest in. Billionaire David Tepper selected Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) as one of the top AI stocks to invest in for 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.
