ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the gap in equity leadership narrowed considerably as mega-cap growth stocks reaffirmed their dominance and obscured weakness in most of the market. The S&P 500 Index rose 4.28% while the NASDAQ Composite advanced 8.26% for the period compared to a 3.28% decline for the small-cap Russell 2000 Index. The strategy underperformed its Russell 1000 Growth Index benchmark in the quarter and delivered gains across five of the 10 sectors it invested in, on an absolute basis. The IT was the primary contributor while the consumer staples and industrials detracted from the performance. Overall stock selection and sector allocation detracted from performance, on a relative basis. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is a professional services company that provides management consulting, technology, and outsourcing services. The one-month return of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) was 2.91%, and its shares lost 3.10% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 5, 2024, Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) stock closed at $299.14 per share with a market capitalization of $187.223 billion.
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“A new position in Accenture helped reduce the Strategy’s IT underweight while also providing high-quality exposure to the generative AI buildout. Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is a durable business well-positioned to benefit from continued growth in overall technology spending, including migration to the cloud and the ramp of enterprise AI adoption. While AI spending thus far has been largely concentrated at the infrastructure layer, we believe that service providers like Accenture will be critical to helping enterprise users implement and integrate AI into their workflows.”
A team of data experts gathered around a computer monitor analyzing customer data.
Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 57 hedge fund portfolios held Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) at the end of the first quarter which was 58 in the previous quarter. Revenues of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 were $16.5 billion, a 1% decline in US dollars. While we acknowledge the potential of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) 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.
We discussed Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) in another article and shared the list of stocks whose price targets were recently trimmed by analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.
