Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its “Polen Global Growth Strategy” fourth-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Over the past two years, global equities (2023-2024) showed a historic +45% cumulative return as per the MSCI ACWI Index (the “Index”), emphasizing market unpredictability and the futility of macroeconomic projections. The Strategy returned 2.58% gross (2.27% net) in the quarter compared to the MSCI ACW Index’s -0.99% return. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
In its fourth quarter 2024 investor letter, Polen Global Growth Strategy emphasized stocks such as ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR). Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is a clinical research organization. The one-month return of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) was -2.77%, and its shares lost 44.59% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On March 18, 2025, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $186.03 per share with a market capitalization of $15.035 billion.
Polen Global Growth Strategy stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“The largest relative detractors in the quarter were ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR), Novo Nordisk, and Adobe. The largest absolute detractors were ICON pic, Novo Nordisk, and L’Oreal.
ICON plc, among the world’s largest contract research organizations, sold off on the back of disappointing 3Q earnings. The business experienced a slowdown more recently due to “budget cuts by two larger customers, lower than anticipated vaccine-related activity and ongoing cautiousness from biotech customers resulting in award and study delays.” We believe ICON remains a best-in-class operator in an outsourcing category experiencing a favorable secular share shift, and we are monitoring the business for signs of an upward shift in its growth trajectory.”
A laboratory setting with a team of scientists working on a clinical trial.
ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 46 hedge fund portfolios held ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 48 in the previous quarter. ICON Public Limited Company’s (NASDAQ:ICLR) fourth quarter revenue was $2.04 billion, represents a year-on-year decrease of 1.2%. While we acknowledge the potential of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) and shared Diamond Hill Mid Cap Strategy’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2024 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.