Andvari Associates, an investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be seen here. A quarterly net return of 11% was delivered by the fund for the year 2021, below its S&P 500 and Russell 2000 benchmarks that delivered a 28.7% and 14.8% return respectively 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.
Andvari Associates, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) and discussed its stance on the firm. Mastercard Incorporated is a Harrison, New York-based financial services company with a $365.6 billion market capitalization. MA delivered a 3.57% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 15.12%. The stock closed at $372.14 per share on January 14, 2022.
Here is what Andvari Associates has to say about Mastercard Incorporated in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“After outperforming the market by a wide margin in 2020, it is hard not to feel disheartened when we underperformed by a wide margin in 2021. Out of the positions we started the year with and which we still own, 2 in our top 5 largest trailed the S&P 500 by more than 25 percentage points during 2021. These two positions were Liberty Broadband and Mastercard/Visa.
We must remember our goal is to outperform the market, net of Andvari’s fees, over the long term. We pursue this goal by concentrating our money in our best ideas. Andvari currently has nine equity positions (some positions are comprised of two stocks, such as Mastercard/Visa). Our top five positions account for more than 70% of net assets under management. There are two notable side effects to this style of investing. One is increased volatility and the other is inevitable periods of underperformance relative to the market.
Mastercard and Visa (“MA&V”) enable the majority of non-cash payment transactions that occur throughout the world. Importantly, they do not issue credit or debit cards. They do not extend credit. They do not dictate or receive revenues from interest rates or other fees that issuing banks charge their card holders. MA&V revenues come from taking a tiny cut of each debit or credit card transaction that passes through their networks…” (Click here to see the full text)
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Our calculations show that Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) ranks 6th on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. MA was in 146 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021, compared to 156 funds in the previous quarter. Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA) delivered a 4.53% return in the past 3 months.
In November 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on MA 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.
