Here’s Why ClearBridge Investments Closed its MRC Global (MRC) Position

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, published its “Small Cap Growth Strategy” third quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the third quarter, the ClearBridge Small Cap Growth Strategy outperformed its Russell 2000 Growth benchmark. On an absolute basis, the Strategy had gains across two of the 10 sectors in which it was invested during the quarter (out of 11 sectors total), with the IT and materials sectors the leading contributors, while the health care and consumer discretionary sectors were the primary detractors. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.

ClearBridge Small Cap Growth Strategy, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned MRC Global Inc. (NYSE: MRC) and discussed its stance on the firm. MRC Global Inc. is a Houston, Texas-based supply-chain solutions company with a $584.4 million market capitalization. MRC delivered a 2.76% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 10.30%. The stock closed at $7.07 per share on January 03, 2022

Here is what ClearBridge Small Cap Growth Strategy has to say about MRC Global Inc.  in its Q3 2021 investor letter:

“Similar to earlier this year, we have continued to winnow back our larger cap companies and redeploy assets to constrain market cap in the Strategy. We closed a position in MRC Global in the oilfield
services industry and significantly trimmed our holding in US Ecology, a specialty provider of waste management services, for a variety of fundamental and portfolio construction reasons.”

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Based on our calculations, MRC Global Inc. (NYSE: MRC) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. MRC was in 20 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 18 funds in the previous quarter. MRC Global Inc. (NYSE: MRC) delivered a -8.30% return in the past 3 months.

You can find more than 100 investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q3 page.

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