Longleaf Partners Fund, a Memphis-based fund under Southeastern Asset Management, recently released its Q4 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 22.75% for the quarter, outperforming its benchmark, the S&P 500 Index which returned 12.15% in the same quarter. You should check out Longleaf Partners’ top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.
In the Q4 2020 Investor Letter, the fund highlighted a few stocks and General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) is one of them. General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) is an American multinational conglomerate. In the last three months, General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) stock gained 23.2% and on March 30th it had a closing price of $13.30. Here is what the fund said:
“General Electric (GE) (-2%, 0.17%; 74%, 3.56%), the Aviation, Healthcare and Power conglomerate, was the top contributor in the fourth quarter, taking its YTD performance into slightly positive territory after a very difficult first half. The company’s crown jewel Aviation business sells and maintains commercial and military jet engines. With air travel frozen, this year’s second quarter was its worst in over a century of operating history with a $680 million operating loss. 3Q revenues improved sequentially as some flights resumed but still declined 39% year-over-year. Yet GE Aviation earned a remarkable $356 million in the third quarter due to extreme cost discipline. With fewer expenses, the same world-class competitive position and favorable long-term air-travel growth prospects, Aviation should keep improving incrementally with the potential to emerge stronger than ever within several years. GE Healthcare revenues, excluding non-recurring ventilator sales for COVID treatment, also improved 3% year-over-year in an encouraging performance. GE also took steps to give back in 2020 by working to help develop thousands of ventilators to aid coronavirus patients. The stock has roughly doubled from its March low as business results improved, in large part due to CEO Larry Culp’s excellent management. Please stay tuned for the next episode of the Price-to-Value Podcast in which Vice-Chairman Staley Cates interviews Larry Culp on Lean manufacturing, GE’s culture, navigating COVID and his outlook for the business.”
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Longleaf Partners has been a long time General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) bull. In December 2020, we shared Longleaf Partners’ bullish General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) thesis in this article.
In Q4 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) stock increased by about 53% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers believe in GE’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
