Loomis Sayles, an investment management company, released its “International Growth Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund returned 13.10% vs. 8.06% for the MSCI ACWI Ex USA Index (Net) in the quarter. Stock selection in consumer discretionary, information technology, financials, consumer staples, and communication services sector, as well as allocation s to the consumer discretionary and consumer staples sectors, all positively impacted the fund’s relative performance. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Loomis Sayles International Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO), in the Q3 2024 investor letter. Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) engages in the research and development, manufacture, and distribution of pharmaceutical products. The one-month return of Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) was -17.41%, and its shares lost 15.27% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 26, 2024, Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) stock closed at $87.65 per share with a market capitalization of $385.284 billion.
Loomis Sayles International Growth Fund stated the following regarding Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) is a global healthcare company with over 100 years of innovation and leadership in protein science and diabetes care. Over this time, Novo’s focus on the biology and causes of diabetes have led to unparalleled endocrine and metabolic disorder expertise, experience, and competitive advantage. The company’s understanding of the biology of diabetes has not only sustained Novo as a global leader in the market for decades, but also provided the foundation for Novo to be the leading innovator and first mover in using GLP-1s to treat obesity. Today, with over 90% of Novo sales coming from diabetes and obesity, Novo also captures over one third of global diabetes value share and approximately 80% value share of the global obesity market. In its rare disease business segment, which represents approximately 10% of annual revenues, Novo Nordisk has leading positions within hemophilia care, growth hormone therapy, and hormone replacement therapy. Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk employs over 60,000 people globally and markets its products in 170 countries. We believe this expertise, commercial scale, and manufacturing footprint, combined with its relentless commitment to ongoing innovation, provides the foundation for continued growth.
A fund holding since inception, Novo reported quarterly financial results that were modestly ahead of consensus expectations, benefiting from continued demand for the company’s industry-leading GLP-1 products. The company also modestly increased its full-year guidance range for both revenue and cash flow, while lowering the mid-point of profit guidance by 2% to 24%. Shares may have reactively negatively to a decline in realized pricing for GLP-1s. However, because net pricing for products is not disclosed and must be estimated by reported revenues and approximate prescriptions per period, for rapidly growing products such as the company’s Wegovy and Ozempic therapies, net pricing is often higher than realized pricing due to the timing of revenue recognition which occurs when the product is shipped to distributors, while prescriptions are lagged. This effect creates volatility in realized price that we believe is not reflective of normalized pricing. While both we and the company expect pricing to decline as the therapies continue to further penetrate the market, there is no change to our view of the attractiveness of the GLP-1 market, where Novo remains the clear leader and demand continues to substantially outstrip current supply. Novo continues to invest in manufacturing infrastructure that can be leveraged not only for GLP-1s, but which also has the flexibility to produce all of Novo’s peptide-based therapies…” (Click here to read the full text)
An elderly couple receiving insulin from a pharmacist, representing healthcare company’s successful pharmaceutical products.
Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 61 hedge fund portfolios held Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) at the end of the third quarter which was 67 in the previous quarter. In the first nine months, Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) delivered 24% sales growth and 22% operating profit growth. While we acknowledge the potential of Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) 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 Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) and shared the list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed on Friday’s Squawk on the street. Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) was one of the top individual detractors from relative performance of Hardman Johnston Global Equity during Q3 2024. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.