Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Fintech Fund” first-quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. In the quarter ended March 31, 2022, Baron FinTech Fund (the “Fund”) fell 16.67% (Institutional Shares) compared with a 4.60% decline for the S&P 500 Index (the “Benchmark”) and a 12.78% decline for the FactSet Global FinTech Index. Try to spend some time looking at the fund’s top 5 holdings to be informed about their best picks for 2022.
In its Q1 2022 investor letter, Baron Fintech Fund mentioned Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 1899, Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) is an Atlanta, Georgia-based multinational consumer credit reporting agency with a $22.4 billion market capitalization. Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) delivered a -37.38% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -20.61%. The stock closed at $183.35 per share on June 10, 2022.
Here is what Baron Fintech Fund has to say about Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) in its Q1 2022 investor letter:
“We initiated a position in Equifax Inc., a leading consumer credit bureau and information services company. It collects and manages large databases of consumer data, such as credit, employment, and income records. Equifax uses these assets to provide data and analytics services to businesses and governments to make credit and marketing decisions. Credit bureaus have numerous competitive advantages, including economies of scale, regulatory barriers, and high switching costs as customers rely on their mission-critical solutions. Following a data breach in 2017, the senior management team was replaced and over $1.5 billion was spent on modernizing Equifax’s technology infrastructure and migrating it to the cloud. In addition to strengthening the company’s cyber defenses, we believe this technology transformation will enable a faster pace of product innovation and drive higher organic growth.
Unique to Equifax is its Workforce Solutions business, which maintains a database of employment and income records sourced from employers and payroll processors. Equifax has over 136 million active records representing over 60% of U.S. non-farm payrolls. Businesses and government agencies use this data for employment and income verification, which is needed when someone applies for a mortgage, requests government benefits, or changes jobs. We believe Equifax has by far the largest repository of this valuable data and continues to add new records at a faster pace than competitors. With durable growth coming from new product innovation and its Workforce Solutions business, we believe that Equifax is a high-quality business that is well positioned to grow earnings per share at a mid-teens rate over a multi-year period.”
Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com
Our calculations show that Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) was in 43 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2022, compared to 41 funds in the previous quarter. Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) delivered a -18.11% return in the past 3 months.
In April 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q1 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
