Carillon Tower Advisers, an investment management firm, published its “Carillon Eagle Mid Cap Growth Fund” second quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. Mid-cap stocks extended their recent run of success in the second quarter, advancing for the fifth consecutive quarter following the sharp selloff induced by the early stages of the pandemic. Among the two style indexes, the Russell Midcap® Growth Index (up 11.07%) staged a strong comeback against its Russell Midcap® Value Index (up 5.66%) counterpart, after lagging rather significantly in the first quarter. 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 Carillon Tower Advisers, the fund mentioned Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) and discussed its stance on the firm. Global Payments Inc. is an Atlanta, Georgia-based financial technology services provider with a $48.3 billion market capitalization. GPN delivered a -23.67% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -23.67%. The stock closed at $165.47 per share on September 15, 2021.
Here is what Carillon Tower Advisers has to say about Global Payments Inc. in its Q2 2021 investor letter:
“Global Payments is a payments technology company delivering innovative payments and software solutions that allow customers to operate their businesses more efficiently. Investors have been disappointed at the pace of the revenue acceleration given the uneven nature of the reopening globally. The U.S. is doing well with issues, but Europe and Asia remain in various stages of reopening and lockdowns and thus, spending has been curtailed. However, we believe that the U.S. is leading the way and as vaccines are rolled out worldwide, Global Payments stands to benefit in the second half of this year and into 2022.”
Photo by Viacheslav Bublyk on Unsplash
Based on our calculations, Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. GPN was in 66 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 62 funds in the previous quarter. Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) delivered a -14.92% 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.
