Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its “Polen Global Growth Strategy” first-quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The fund returned 11.37% net in the first quarter compared to a return of 7.31% for the MSCI ACW Index. Global equity markets were volatile in the first quarter. The market rewarded quality fundamentals in January, and fear of inflation and central bank policy reemerged in February. However, despite the banking crisis, quality fundamentals were rewarded again in March. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Polen Global Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) provides consumer products and subscriptions. On April 24, 2023, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock closed at $106.21 per share. One-month return of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) was 9.22%, and its shares lost 23.80% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has a market capitalization of $1.09 trillion.
Polen Global Growth Strategy made the following comment about Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“We raised our position in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). During 2022, Amazon’s business experienced revenue deceleration from pre-pandemic levels combined with higher expenses resulting from inflation pressures as well as costs in their fulfillment segment. The fulfillment costs were set in motion during the pandemic when demand overwhelmed their network. More recently, AWS – along with Azure and GCP – experienced a deceleration in growth as customers globally feel pressure to optimize their usage in this tough macroeconomic environment. We don’t expect this deceleration to persist for the long-term given the secular trend of companies transitioning to the cloud.
For long-term investors, we believe this combination provides an opportunity and that Amazon is now poised to re-accelerate revenue growth, of which we are already seeing signs, while expanding margins and free cash flow. With respect to margins, given the fast growth in AWS and advertising, the latter generating almost $40 Billion in sales and growing at greater than 30% recently, the resulting mix-shift could result in operating margins of 10% or higher over time. This level would represent a 5x increase over 2022 levels. In sum, we are capitalizing on what we believe is arguably one of the most competitively advantaged business in the world, which is growing well, poised to accelerate that growth and expand margins, and is trading at an attractive price.”
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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is in 2nd position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 240 hedge fund portfolios held Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 269 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in another article and shared the list of best diversified stocks to buy. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 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.
