Carillon Tower Advisers, an investment management company, released its “Carillon Eagle Small Cap Growth Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Small-cap stocks were unable to sustain the positive gains made in the first quarter and finished the second quarter in negative territory. Among the style indexes, the Russell 2000® Growth Index outperformed the Russell 2000® Value Index by a modest margin, with a decrease of 2.92% compared to a decrease of 3.75%. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Carillon Eagle Small Cap Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) designs, develops, manufactures, and supports process control tools that perform optical metrology. The one-month return of Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) was 8.10%, and its shares gained 51.25% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 28, 2024, Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) stock closed at $206.79 per share with a market capitalization of $10.212 billion.
Carillon Eagle Small Cap Growth Fund stated the following regarding Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) provides process control solutions and inspection systems primarily used in the fabrication of semiconductors and other solid-state devices. The company’s quarterly earnings report exceeded expectations and raised guidance, led by an inflection in advanced nodes and continued strength in packaging inspection, especially tied to semiconductors that enable artificial intelligence. Investors are excited about the prospects of the company’s packaging technology being critical in the manufacturing of next-genera[1]tion artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors.
Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 39 hedge fund portfolios held Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) at the end of the second quarter which was 25 in the previous quarter. The second quarter revenue of Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) was $242 million, up 6% from Q1 2024, and up 27% from Q2 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) 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 Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE:ONTO) and shared TimesSquare Capital U.S. Small Cap Growth Strategy’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.