Alger, an investment management firm, published its “Alger Small Cap Focus Fund” third quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. During the third quarter, the largest portfolio sector weightings were Health Care and Information Technology. The largest sector overweight was Health Care. The portfolio had no exposure to the Financials, Materials, Real Estate, or Utilities sectors. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.
Alger, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MPWR) and discussed its stance on the firm. Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. is a Kirkland, Washington-based analog semiconductor company with a $23.4 billion market capitalization. MPWR delivered a 39.52% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 58.95%. The stock closed at $510.95 per share on October 22, 2021.
Here is what Alger has to say about Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. in its Q3 2021 investor letter:
“Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. was among the top contributors to performance. Monolithic Power Systems is a semiconductor company that designs, develops and markets high-performance power solutions. Its core strengths include deep system-level applications knowledge, strong analog design expertise and innovative proprietary process technologies, which enable the company to deliver highly integrated products that are energy efficient, cost effective and easy to use. Monolithic serves the consumer, computing and storage, industrial, automotive and communications end markets. Its strong process technology and use of partners to produce silicon wafers is a unique combination that provides the company with an unencumbered ability to innovate and offer nimble yet scaled manufacturing. Shares of Monolithic outperformed after the company said it produced very strong second quarter results and provided third quarter guidance that exceeded consensus expectations. Monolithic’s revenue growth accelerated in an environment in which most analog and broader semiconductor peers have struggled with industry-wide supply constraints. The company is benefiting from its continuous investments in capacity and its ability to carry inventories during previous times of weak demand. The results also underscore the success the company is having with winning contracts to provide sockets, which connect computer motherboards to CPUs. We believe the results increased investor confidence that the company can sustain this strong revenue growth, which is well above the industry average, over the next one to two years.”
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Based on our calculations, Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MPWR) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. MPWR was in 34 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 32 funds in the previous quarter. Monolithic Power Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MPWR) delivered a 23.34% return in the past 3 months.
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
