Meridian Funds, managed by ArrowMark Partners, released its “Meridian Contrarian Fund” third quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, the fund returned -3.28% net compared to -2.82% return for the Russell 2500 Index. At the same time, the fund outperformed its secondary benchmark, the Russell 2500 Value Index, which returned -4.50%. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2022.
Meridian Funds highlighted stocks like Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) in the Q3 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in Incline Village, Nevada, Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) is a wine and craft, spirit producer. On December 7, 2022, Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) stock closed at $3.4400 per share. One-month return of Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) was 29.32% and its shares lost 67.70% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) has a market capitalization of $212.217 million.
Meridian Funds made the following comment about Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:
“Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) is a top-10 U.S. wine producer by sales with more than 50 brands, 2,800 acres of vineyards, state-of-the-art production facilities, and diversified distribution, including wholesale, direct-to-consumer, and business-to-business. The company seeks to augment organic growth with acquisitions of small wineries that it can plug into its superior operating, distribution, and marketing platform to accelerate growth and enhance profit. When we initiated a position in Vintage Wine during the first quarter of 2021, its stock was trading at a significant discount to beverage peers as a result of Caroline pandemic-related disruptions to the acquisition pipeline and on-premise sales channels. Weak earnings due to write-offs caused by wildfire damage to its vineyards also weighed on the stock. We believe valuation multiples were further compressed because Vintage Wine was a special-purpose acquisition company at a time when these investment vehicles were deeply out of favor. Our investment thesis was that steady profit growth helped by new capacity investments coming online as well as strength in the directto-consumer and business-to-business channels would drive earnings growth and multiple expansion. During the quarter, Vintage Wine’s stock declined significantly after the company reported disappointing earnings results. The wine producer has been hit hard by supply chain problems, which hurt both sales and profits. It also lost some sales due to brand repositioning. We reduced our exposure in the stock during the quarter as a matter of discipline but maintain a small position. While we believe it will take several quarters for Vintage Wine’s management to establish credibility with investors, we are willing to be patient because the long-term thesis appears intact, and the stock currently trades below liquidation value supported by hard assets such as valuable real estate and modern production equipment.”
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Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 6 hedge fund portfolios held Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) at the end of the third quarter, which was 10 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Vintage Wine Estates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VWE) in another article and shared the five best wine stocks to invest in 2022. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2022 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.
