Here’s Why ClearBridge Investments Acquired Shares in Becton, Dickinson and Company (BDX)

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Large Cap Value Strategy” second quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the strategy underperformed its Russell 1000 Value benchmark Index. The second quarter was highly volatile due to changes in interest rates, fears of recession, and the war. The health care and real estate sectors contributed positively to the fund’s performance, whereas the financials, IT, and industrials sectors underperformed. For more information on the fund’s top picks in 2022, please check its top five holdings.

In the second quarter investor letter, ClearBridge Investments discussed the performance of its ClearBridge Large Cap Value Strategy portfolio. In the quarter, the fund added stocks like Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX). Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) is a medical technology company, headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and has a market capitalization of $72.81 billion. The stock of Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) closed at $255.30 per share on August 9, 2022. One-month return of Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) rose to 7.76%, and its 12-month return jumped to 12.56%.

Here’s how ClearBridge Investments mentioned Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) in the Q2, 2022 investor letter:

“While in recent quarters we have maintained an underweight to health care, in the second half of 2021 we added to our managed care exposure in anticipation of overall market vulnerability given high inflation and valuations. This proved helpful in the second quarter, although our overall underweight was a drag on relative results. We have continued to look for attractive opportunities in the sector, understanding its characteristic stability in challenging markets, and in the second quarter we added Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX), a broadly diversified manufacturer of hospital supplies, laboratory research equipment and therapeutic medical devices. The company’s reasonable valuation and razor-razorblade business model should help it deliver stable mid-single-digit topline growth with a steady valuation multiple.”

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Although,  ClearBridge Investments invested in Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX), it is not on the list of  30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) was held by 49 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter, which was 54 in the previous quarter.

We discussed Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX) in another article and shared ClearBridge Investments’ views about the company in the previous quarter. You can check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2022 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other prominent investors.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.