Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Opportunity Fund” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. An increase of 3.16% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the fourth quarter of 2021 but trailed the Russell 3000 Growth Index, which increased 10.89%, and the S&P 500 Index, which climbed 11.03%. For the full year 2021, the Fund gained 12.29% but underperformed the two indexes, which advanced 25.85% and 28.71%, respectively Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Baron Opportunity Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and discussed its stance on the firm. Founded in 2015, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a Mountain View, California-based multinational technology conglomerate holding company with a $1.8 trillion market capitalization, and is currently spearheaded by its CEO, Sundar Pichai. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered a -5.45% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 33.91%. The stock closed at $2,736.03 per share on March 18, 2022.
Here is what Baron Opportunity Fund has to say about Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Alphabet Inc. is the parent company of Google, the world’s largest search and online advertising company. It also houses a market-leading cloud business. Shares outperformed in the quarter after Alphabet reported solid results across the board, with overall revenues growing 41%, driven by an outperformance in search and YouTube. The growth in YouTube was especially encouraging given near-term concerns about advertising trends. Overall operating profit also grew an impressive 88%, demonstrating meaningful improvements in cost controls. Management emphasized that AR/VR (artificial and virtual reality) will be an exciting part of the future and they are investing in hardware and tech to support that vision. Long term, we believe Alphabet is exposed to an array of upside optionality across a diverse range of secular growth tailwinds, including digital media consumption, cloud computing, local commerce, gaming, AR/VR, and selfdriving.”
Photo by Kai Wenzel on Unsplash
Our calculations show that Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was in 158 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 156 funds in the previous quarter. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) delivered a -4.20% return in the past 3 months.
In March 2022, we published an article that includes Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in the 10 Stocks to Buy Today According to Jed Nussdorf’s Soapstone Capital. You can find more than 100 investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
