Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen International Growth” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -1.14% was delivered by the fund for the Q1 of 2021, trailing its MSCI All Country World benchmark that delivered a 3.49% return for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Polen International Growth Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), and shared their insights on the company. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is a Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel-based software company that currently has a $16 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, CHKP delivered a -10.50% return, while its 12-month gains are up by 13.56%. As of May 14, 2021, the stock closed at $118.95 per share.
Here is what Polen International Growth Fund has to say about Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:
“We also exited Check Point Software because we believe we found a better investment alternative. Check Point continues to perform in line with expectations and has delivered approximately 10% earnings per share growth. The company’s intensive focus on maintaining its position in on-premise firewall security, a corner of the market that we think offers slower growth prospects, means the wave innovation and growth hitting security software is not driving Check Point’s business.
Check Point innovated firewall architectures in the 1990s, and we believe it continues to orient its business for leadership in the data center. Security software is rapidly evolving as changes to the enterprise computing architecture alter the way companies position their IT infrastructure. As infrastructures change, security demands shift, and new companies come to market with innovative ways to protect distributed networks. We believe Check Point’s legacy of technology leadership, though robust, may be preventing the company from evolving fast enough to capture these changes. We feel Check Point will continue to lead in on-premise security systems and grow in line with its recent past.”
Our calculations show that Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. was in 26 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 27 funds in the third quarter. CHKP delivered a -1.47% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
