Is it the Best Time Now to Short Starbucks (SBUX) Shares?

Polen Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Polen Global Growth” fourth quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly gross return of 7.08% was delivered by the fund for the fourth quarter of 2021, versus the MSCI All-Country World Index (the “Index”)’s return of 6.67% for the same period.  Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

Polen Global Growth, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) and discussed its stance on the firm. Starbucks Corporation is a Seattle, Washington-based coffeehouse company with a $109.4 billion market capitalization. SBUX delivered a -18.63% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -8.87%. The stock closed at $95.18 per share on February 16, 2022.

Here is what Polen Global Growth has to say about Align Technology, Inc. in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“We trimmed Starbucks as a source of funding and to edge our weighting down. While the company has managed well through a difficult environment, we recognize that lockdowns are categorically challenging for this business. Starbucks has a robust mobile order and pay platform fueled by a sophisticated app as well as a strong loyalty program, but this doesn’t alter the fact that the store-based retail business is important to the company. As a result, we felt a smaller weighting was appropriate.”

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Our calculations show that Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. SBUX was in 58 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 63 funds in the previous quarter. Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) delivered a -15.41% return in the past 3 months.

In August 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on SBUX in another article. You can find other 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.