Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Opportunity Fund” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. An increase of 3.16% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the fourth quarter of 2021 but trailed the Russell 3000 Growth Index, which increased 10.89%, and the S&P 500 Index, which climbed 11.03%. For the full year 2021, the Fund gained 12.29% but underperformed the two indexes, which advanced 25.85% and 28.71%, respectively Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Baron Opportunity Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) and discussed its stance on the firm. Founded in 2000, Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) is a Needham, Massachusetts-based online travel company with a $3.6 billion market capitalization, and is currently spearheaded by its CEO, Stephen Kaufer. Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) delivered a -6.90% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -57.69%. The stock closed at $25.38 per share on March 18, 2022.
Here is what Baron Opportunity Fund has to say about Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Tripadvisor, Inc. is primarily a hotel metasearch business, where users can browse various hotel options and read detailed user reviews, and then click away to a third-party hotel or online travel agency site to make their booking. We invested in Tripadvisor under the premise that they could further monetize their 460 million unique monthly active users through a “Trip Plus” travel-subscription program, where users could book hotels directly on Tripadvisor, allowing the company to participate more directly in the transaction and therefore capture incremental value. Despite initial positive traction, there were several roadblocks which led to the continued delay of the product launch and ultimately the exit of the several senior executives, including the CEO and the executive heading the Trip Plus experience. We learned that subscription businesses are hard to launch and there are more moving parts than may initially meet the eye. We significantly reduced our position.”
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Our calculations show that Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) was in 30 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 33 funds in the previous quarter. Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) delivered a -1.17% return in the past 3 months.
In December 2021, we also shared Baron Fund’s Q3 2021 views on Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ:TRIP) in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
