Qualivian Investment Partners, an investment management firm, published its second-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. From inception (December 14, 2017) to the end of Q2 2021, the fund has returned 102.8% and 98.5% on a gross and net basis respectively, outperforming the S&P 500 Total Return index by 30.4% and 26.1%, respectively. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their top bets for 2021.
In the Q2 2021 investor letter of Qualivian Investment Partners, the fund mentioned Moody’s Corporation (NYSE: MCO) and discussed its stance on the firm. Moody’s Corporation is a New York, New York-based bond credit rating company with a $71.4 billion market capitalization. MCO delivered a 32.07% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 35.08%. The stock closed at $381.94 per share on September 8, 2021.
Here is what Qualivian Investment Partners has to say about Moody’s Corporation in its Q2 2021 investor letter:
“Moody’s: Revenue, operating profit margins, and EPS all exceeded expectations, and annual guidance for these items (and for free cash flow) was raised. In MIS (Moody’s Investors Service) which houses the traditional ratings business, the outlook for debt issuance was raised for the remainder of the year, while MA (Moody’s Analytics) also came in ahead of expectations. The company leveraged strong revenue growth with strong operating profit margin improvement of 200 bps, with EPS coming in $0.22 ahead of consensus estimates. Management alluded to having interesting opportunities in their M&A pipeline, which we will have to assess when the time comes, but Moody’s management team has been very effective at allocating capital in the past toward value-creating bolt-on acquisitions, especially in their Moody’s Analytics business, a key growth driver for the company.”
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Based on our calculations, Moody’s Corporation (NYSE: MCO) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. MCO was in 44 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 55 funds in the previous quarter. Moody’s Corporation (NYSE: MCO) delivered a 12.79% return in the past 3 months.
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
