Wedgewood Partners, an investment management company, released its “Wedgewood Partners Large Cap Focused Growth Fund” second quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, Wedgewood Composite’s net return was 8.1% compared to the Standard & Poor’s 8.7%, Russell 1000 Growth Index’s 12.8%, and Russell 1000 Value Index’s 4.1% return for the same period. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2023.
Wedgewood Partners Large Cap Focused Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the second quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a multinational technology company that designs and manufactures smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables, and accessories. On July 19, 2023, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock closed at $195.10 per share. One-month return of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was 4.33%, and its shares gained 25.59% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a market capitalization of $3.069 trillion.
Wedgewood Partners Large Cap Focused Growth Fund made the following comment about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:
“Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) contributed to positive performance during the quarter despite declining revenues and operating earnings mostly driven by difficult comparisons in its Mac segment. iPhone sales grew as supply chain bottlenecks seem to be in the rearview mirror, with component prices falling. The Company also highlighted the torrid growth of its App Store ecosystem, which saw over $1.1 trillion in billings on the platform during 2022, more than double the billings in 2019. Apple has tremendous leverage across the mobile economy due to the App Store’s mission-critical relevance to both developers and users. We continue to hold Apple as a top weighting in the portfolio because this asset-light ecosystem drives sustainably high returns on invested capital.
In January 2007 Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld in San Francisco. At the time of that momentous day, Jobs had not planned for third-party developers to build native software applications (apps) for the iPhone’s internal operating software (iOS). However, later that year, bowing to considerable pressure from the developer community, Jobs relented. When the second-generation iPhone (3G) was released in the summer of 2008, Apple announced the opening of the iPhone App Store at the same time. According to the Company in July 2009, after just the first 12 months since the launch of the App Store, 1.5 billion apps were downloaded from 65,000 apps from more than 100,000 developers from 77 countries.
That early symbiotic relationship between the iPhone (hardware) and the App Store (software) completely redefined the utility of the iPhone (think Intel and Microsoft). Too bad American Express coined the phrase, “Don’t Leave Home Without It.” That perfectly describes the utility of the modern iPhone. Heck, for years now, most of us won’t walk from the kitchen to the garage without it…” (Click here to read the full text)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in 8th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 131 hedge fund portfolios held Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) at the end of first quarter which was 135 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in another article and shared the list of best big tech stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2023 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.
