Is MSCI (MSCI) a Resilient Business?

Aoris Investment Management, a specialist international equity manager, released its “Aoris International Fund” Q2 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the quarter, Portfolio’s Class A (Unhedged) returned -2.9% compared to 0.5% return for the MSCI AC World Accum Index ex-Australia (AUD). The fund’s Class C (Hedged) returned -1.0% compared to a 3.3% return for the MSCI AC World Accum Index ex-Australia 100% Hedged (AUD). In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.

Aoris International Fund highlighted stocks like MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI), provides critical decision support tools and solutions for the investment community. The one-month return of MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) was 3.11%, and its shares gained 6.65% of their value over the last three months. On August 20, 2024, MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) stock closed at $563.00 per share with a market capitalization of $44.252 billion.

Aoris International Fund stated the following regarding MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

“MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) is a leading provider of data and analytics for the investment industry. The company is best known for the indices that bear its name, which are used to construct and benchmark portfolios of international equity funds. It also provides analytical tools and data that help investors understand the performance, risk and ESG characteristics of their portfolios.

MSCI’s indices are used by active equity managers such as Aoris, who pay an annual subscription fee to benchmark themselves against them, and by managers of exchange-traded index funds (ETFs), such as Vanguard and BlackRock, who use MSCI’s data to construct their funds. Currently, $14 trillion of actively managed assets are benchmarked to MSCI’s indices and over $1.6 trillion of ETFs are linked to its indices. Its customers couldn’t operate their investment products without its data, which is reflected in a retention rate for its index customers of above 95%.

The index business is highly profitable because once MSCI creates a new product, it can sell this intellectual property to many customers for little additional cost. MSCI has consistently invested in new indices that meet evolving investment needs, such as those that track a particular sector, market theme, or particular criteria for a customer. It also earns revenue and grows in relevance with the increasing volume of futures and options contracts that are traded based on its indices…” (Click here to read the full text)

A successful portfolio manager working on a laptop in a large office with a city view, representing the success of the company in the financial sector.

MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 47 hedge fund portfolios held MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) at the end of the second quarter which was 53 in the previous quarter. MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) reported earnings per share growth of 12% and organic revenue growth of 10% in the second quarter 2024. While we acknowledge the potential of MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) 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.

In another article, we discussed MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI) and shared the list of stocks to buy and sell from Jim Cramer’s latest portfolio. In Q2 2024, Polen Focus Growth Strategy reinitiated a position in MSCI Inc. (NYSE:MSCI). 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.