Artisan Partners, an investment management firm, published its “Artisan Global Value Fund” second-quarter 2022 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -13.40% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTGX, -13.32% by its Advisor Class: APDGX, and -13.33% by its Institutional Class: APHGX, in the second quarter of 2022, outperforming its MSCI All Country World benchmark that delivered a -15.66% return in the same period. Go over the fund’s top 5 positions to have a glimpse of its finest picks for 2022.
In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Nordstern Capital mentioned StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) and explained its insights for the company. Founded in 2000, StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) is a Cayman Islands-based IT service management company with a $3.0 billion market capitalization. StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) delivered a -42.70% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -83.63%. The stock closed at $9.66 per share on July 28, 2022.
Here is what Nordstern Capital has to say about StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) in its Q2 2022 investor letter:
“‘To grow its customer base, X.com had been giving out lines of credit to prospective customers, part of its plan for a full suite of financial services products. But with X.com expanding as fast as it had, appropriate underwriting had taken a back seat.’ – Jimmy Soni, in ‘The Founders’
StoneCo Ltd. (Stone) today is seen as a payment provider with lower margins than its peers in a structurally difficult environment in Brazil: strong competition, declining take rates, increasing funding costs. The last two quarterly updates indicated improvement in all business lines for Stone and management did forecast further margin increases throughout all of 2022. In contrast to the other payment providers, Stone also has a sizable software business. In addition, Stone is working towards becoming a full-fledged financial services provider. Both endeavors add costs to the P&L, but do not yet add meaningful profits, which is about to change. Particularly the lending business could become bigger and more profitable than the current bread-and-butter payments business. However, the lending business was suspended last year after experiencing issues that resemble those of the early PayPal from more than two decades ago (“X.com” was renamed “PayPal” in 2001)…” (Click here to see the full text)
Our calculations show that StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) fell short and didn’t make it on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) was in 43 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2022, compared to 35 funds in the previous quarter. StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) delivered a -0.41% return in the past 3 months.
In June 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on StoneCo Ltd. (NASDAQ:STNE) in another article. You can find other investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2022 Q2 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
