Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund experienced an excellent quarter to end another successful year. The fund increased 11.7% (Institutional Shares) in the fourth quarter compared to a 7.1% gain for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and a 2.4% increase for the S&P 500 Index. For the full year, the fund returned 37.8% compared to 33.4% and 25.0% 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 Fifth Avenue Growth Fund emphasized stocks such as Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET). Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) is a cloud services provider that delivers a range of services to businesses worldwide. The one-month return of Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) was 5.73%, and its shares gained 50.64% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On February 24, 2025, Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) stock closed at $148.00 per share with a market capitalization of $51.1 billion.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“We took advantage of recent inflows to add to several of our existing holdings, in which our relative conviction level and attractive valuations warranted an increase in position sizes. Our largest addition was Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET), which offers enhanced security and performance for websites, apps, and software as a service. The company continues reporting solid quarterly results with 28% year-on-year revenue growth and 14.8% non-GAAP operating margins, which increased 210bps year-on-year. A double-digit year-on-year increase in sales productivity has started to benefit EMEA and APAC growth rates. Customer additions were also robust and remaining performance obligations were well ahead of expectations, up 39%. In addition, the company announced the hiring of CJ Desai as President of Product & Engineering, a well-regarded executive that helped build ServiceNow into one of the best software businesses of all time – and a large position in the portfolio. Our relative conviction in Cloudflare warranted adding to our position, given the company’s visionary management team, and stacking S curves or markets that it can address with its platform as it helps companies modernize their networking infrastructure.”
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 55 hedge fund portfolios held Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 44 in the third quarter. Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) finished 2024 on a high note, generating $459.9 million in revenue, which represents a 27% increase compared to the previous year. While we acknowledge the potential of Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) 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 Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) and shared the list of large tech stocks that are skyrocketing so far in 2025. 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.