Wedgewood Partners, an investment management firm, published its third-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly portfolio net return of +2.75% was recorded by the fund for the third quarter of 2021, outperforming the S&P 500 Index that delivered a +0.58% return for the same period, and the +1.16% gain of the Russell 1000 Growth Index. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.
Wedgewood Partners, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE: EW) and discussed its stance on the firm. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation is an Irvine, California-based medical technology company with a $70 billion market capitalization. EW delivered a 23.14% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 31.65%. The stock closed at $111.57 per share on October 14, 2021.
Here is what Wedgewood Partners has to say about Edwards Lifesciences Corporation in its Q3 2021 investor letter:
“Edwards Lifesciences returned to a double-digit 2-year growth rate during the quarter. Lifesaving medical procedures, such as severe aortic stenosis valve replacement, got back to some semblance of normal in the late stages of the pandemic. The Company is still in the early years of leading the charge of replacing open surgical procedures with minimally invasive transcatheter therapies. As medical visits continue to return to normal, Edwards should be able to expand its lead, particularly after a major competitor has had issues with product efficacy. Edwards should be able to maintain its market leadership by focusing its higher than peer average research and development budget on just a handful of product lines.”
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Based on our calculations, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE: EW) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. EW was in 47 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 36 funds in the previous quarter. Edwards Lifesciences Corporation (NYSE: EW) delivered a 5.05% 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.
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, we like undervalued, EBITDA-positive growth stocks, so we are checking out stock pitches like this biotech stock. We go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
