Wasatch Global Investors, an investment management firm, published its “Wasatch Core Growth Fund” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the fourth quarter, the benchmark Russell 2000® Index rose 2.14% while the Russell 2000 Growth Index increased 0.01%. Outperforming its benchmark, the Wasatch Core Growth Fund—Investor Class gained 5.72%. For the one-year period ended December 31, 2021, the Fund’s Investor Class returned 21.03%, which compared favorably to the 14.82% gain in the Russell 2000 Index and the 2.83% increase in the Russell 2000 Growth Index. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Wasatch Core Growth Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Pool Corporation (NASDAQ: POOL) and discussed its stance on the firm. Pool Corporation is a Covington, Louisiana-based swimming pool supplies, equipment, and related products distributor with an $18.8 billion market capitalization. POOL delivered a -17.06% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 45.08%. The stock closed at $469.45 per share on March 03, 2022.
Here is what Wasatch Core Growth Fund has to say about Pool Corporation in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“An example of a company with what we consider a superior long-term business model is Pool Corp. (POOL), a wholesale distributor of swimming pools and related supplies. The company’s customers include more than 120,000 contractors and retailers. Pool offers approximately 200,000 national-brand and private-label products from more than 2,000 suppliers. In an industry characterized by fragmented suppliers and fragmented customers, the company has become the premier consolidator of product distribution. We’ve owned Pool for over 20 years (Sam was involved in our initial research of the company), and over this time, the stock has had several periods in which it was down more than 20%. In hindsight, each of these down periods was simply a great buying opportunity. While investors have fretted from time to time over how inflation, interest rates, economic cycles and home-construction statistics would affect backyard recreation, Pool Corp. has remained focused on service improvements. And these improvements have turned out to be much more important than periodic macro trends.
Our general view regarding such trends is that if they’re truly important, they’ll show up in our company-specific fundamental analysis. So while other investors ponder index performance and trends like “growth” versus “value” cycles, we’ll stay focused on business-model quality—which tends to influence the long-term power of sales, earnings and cash flows.”
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash
Our calculations show that Pool Corporation (NASDAQ: POOL) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. POOL was in 38 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 40 funds in the previous quarter. Pool Corporation (NASDAQ: POOL) delivered a -15.67% return in the past 3 months.
In February 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on POOL in another article. You can find other 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.
