Palm Valley Capital Management, an investment management firm, released the “Palm Valley Capital Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, Palm Valley Capital Fund increased 0.79% compared to a 3.11% and 3.64% decline for the S&P SmallCap 600 Index and the Morningstar Small Cap Index, respectively. In Q2, small caps continued their trend of underperforming big caps. The fund’s equity securities saw a slight increase of +0.24% in Q2 before operational expenses (fees). On the other hand, interest received on Treasury bills boosted quarterly profit. At the end of the period, cash equivalents made up 81.4% of the firm’s assets. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2024.
Palm Valley Capital Management highlighted stocks like ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) offers workforce solutions and services globally. The one-month return of ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) was -9.83%, and its shares lost 20.06% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 9, 2024, ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) stock closed at $66.26 per share with a market capitalization of $3.161 billion.
Palm Valley Capital Management stated the following regarding ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“The Fund currently owns three staffing businesses: Resources Connection (RGP), TrueBlue, and ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN). The temporary employment industry is contracting, with U.S. revenues for several public firms down 15% to 25% from two years ago despite higher bill rates. In certain cases, profitability is at a historical trough. The pandemic thrust the labor market into disarray, with many companies struggling to find employees. To avoid reliving that experience, employers have held onto their workforces and have reduced their utilization of temporary staff. Commented ManpowerGroup’s CEO: “We feel this is a cyclical downturn distorted by anomalies created by the pandemic, and eventually, this will sort of flatten out.” Never before has overall employment remained robust with temporary staffing sliding. We’re wagering this is not a structural change, and if we’re correct, then we think the staffing companies in the Fund are trading at attractive valuations based on normalized results. In each case, we believe our holdings have the financial strength to endure a period of challenged profitability.”
A senior executive shaking hands with two candidates to mark the success of a recruitment process.
ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 23 hedge fund portfolios held ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) at the end of the first quarter which was 27 in the previous quarter. In the first quarter 2024, ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) generated $4.4 billion in revenues, a 5% year-over-year decline in constant currency. While we acknowledge the potential of ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
We discussed ManpowerGroup Inc. (NYSE:MAN) in another article and shared the list of largest companies in every state in the US. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
