Saturna Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Amana Funds” fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. For the fourth quarter of 2021, the Amana Income Fund Investor Shares returned 13.76% and the Institutional Shares returned 13.85%. The Amana Growth Fund sprinted to a strong finish in the fourth quarter, wrapping up an outstanding year by any measure. For the three months ended December 31, 2021, the Amana Growth Fund Investor Shares returned 14.41%, significantly outpacing the 6.91% Morningstar “Large Growth” category return, as well as the 11.03% return of the S&P 500. For the 2021 calendar year, Amana Developing World Fund Investor Shares returned 7.31% versus -2.54% for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Saturna Capital Amana Funds, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and discussed its stance on the firm. Founded in 1975, Microsoft Corporation is a Redmond, Washington-based multinational technology conglomerate holding company with a $2.0 trillion market capitalization, and is currently spearheaded by its CEO, Satya Nadella. MSFT delivered a -17.98% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 18.00%. The stock closed at $275.85 per share on March 08, 2022.
Here is what Saturna Capital Amana Funds has to say about Microsoft Corporation in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“Only two companies remain from 2010’s top 10 list: Apple and Microsoft. Going back to 2000, only Microsoft remains. We expect that Microsoft will maintain its position as the dominant global provider of personal and business software, while growing its cloud business and potentially being a key provider of augmented and mixed hardware and software.
US Technology companies have been the equity market’s biggest winners in recent years. Because of the Amana Income Fund’s objective of current income, many of these zero- or low-dividend companies do not suit the Fund’s mandate. One that does — Microsoft, which returned 46.03% for 2021 — was the Fund’s second biggest contributor to returns during the year. While Technology no doubt underpins much of the current economy and its future potential, Tech stocks have also benefited from low inflation, globalization, and valuations that are near historic highs. With globalization backsliding and inflation worries escalating, we believe companies in other industries with strong financial positions, competitive advantages, strong management, attractive dividend yields, and reasonable valuations can offer investors diversification in the context of equity markets increasingly concentrated in a handful of very large Technology firms.”
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Our calculations show that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) ranks 2nd on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. MSFT was in 262 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 252 funds in the previous quarter. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) delivered a -17.64% return in the past 3 months.
In February 2022, we published an article that includes MSFT in the 5 Technology Stocks Hedge Funds Are Talking About. You can find more than 100 investor letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
