We recently compiled a list of Billionaire Phillipe Laffont’s Top 10 “Mostly AI” Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) stands against Philippe Laffont’s other stock picks.
Billionaire Philippe Laffont is a Founder & Portfolio Manager at Coatue Management, L.L.C. His fund’s top 10 holdings comprise of mostly tech stocks which depicts his love for technology. His thirst for technology was such that after graduating from MIT with a computer science degree he applied for a job at Apple multiple times but was rejected every time. This pushed him towards another calling, which was to manage a hedge fund and its holdings.
Philippe Laffont’s journey towards investing started when he moved to Spain where he started working at McKinsey. It was at this time when he learned about the “boom of the PC” and about the three pioneers of PC industry namely IBM, Dell and Microsoft. He decided to invest in these stocks which churned out more money than he was earning at that time. This led to his endeavors as an investor. In order to learn more about being an investor he got a chance to work at a mutual fund without pay where he learned about different terminologies related to the industry to “get his foot in the door”.
After his employment ended in Julian Robertson’s organization, he moved on to gather funds to start investing from his friends and family but most of his funds came from professional brokers and people who admired his entrepreneurial spirit. This led to the launch of his company on January 1, 2000, with $50 million at its disposal and the fund’s AUM now stands at $50 billion. His investment philosophy is to provide longevity and good returns for the investors; and to have investors that would bet on him for the long term. Philippe Laffont’s philosophy of helping out people is visible in his efforts to advise people on investing and he believes in helping any new tech “kid” that could become the next Tiktok.
In his interview at the Bloomberg Invest Philippe Laffont said that he is conflicted about whether small or big companies will be the AI winners. According to him the history of technology indicates that the big gets bigger but new companies have also made it through like Facebook or TikTok. He thinks that AI isn’t overhyped and the valuations aren’t out of whack right now. Here is what he said:
“It’s true that the mentions of AI in every TV and and written form is very high. And so one could say, Wow, if everybody talks about it, it must be priced in. And the only reason why more positive is I remember when I invested in Apple in 2009 when the iPhone first came out and for years people told me, Why are you invested in Apple? Everybody talks about Apple. And obviously it had an incredible run. So I actually think that sometimes because someone speaks a lot about something, it might be actually a good sign versus an overhyped sign.”
Philippe Laffont thinks the next phase of AI will be real estate with data centers and especially utilities with power. Another phase of AI, according to Philippe Laffont would be robots with artificial brains called humanoids. The technology hedge fund manager also made the following prediction which has a huge implication for the semiconductor stocks:
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes, You know, betting on these new technologies like AR/VR turns out to be not so big. 3D printing turns out to be not so big. My estimate is $100 trillion was invested in today’s dollar in the PC, CPU based infrastructure. All this is going to get ripped out to put $100 trillion or more in our GPU based infrastructure.”
Our Methodology
Stocks mentioned in this article were picked from the investment portfolio of Coatue Management at the end of the first quarter of 2024. In order to provide readers with a more comprehensive overview of the companies, the analyst ratings for each firm are mentioned alongside other details. A database of around 900 elite hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey in the first quarter of 2024 was used to quantify the popularity of each stock in the hedge fund universe.
A wide angle shot of a team of bankers and financial advisors evaluating an investment portfolio on a touchscreen monitor.
Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU)
Regulatory filings reveal that Coatue Management owned 62 million shares of Nu Holdings at the end of the first quarter of 2024 worth $749 million, representing 2.9% of the portfolio. On May 15, Susquehanna raised the price target on Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) to $14 from $12 and kept a positive rating.
According to NASDAQ, the company has seen constant growth in its net income for each of the last five quarters leading to rise in share price of 40% last year and eventually a market capitalization of around $60 billion that is now 3 times that of last year in January 2023. Furthermore, 63 hedge funds are rooting for this stock to stay bullish aside from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, that is the most dominant shareholder in the company as of March 31st and has a position worth $1.28 billion.
Baron FinTech Fund stated the following regarding Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) is a digital bank with operations in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Shares appreciated during the quarter after the company reported strong balance sheet growth and improving margins. New product launches and expansion in newer countries are yielding favorable results. Nu also benefited from inclusion in the MSCI Brazil Index, which prompted buying from passively managed funds. We continue to own the stock because Nu is disrupting the financial services industry in Latin America with its digital distribution and intense focus on user experience. The company has grown to serve over 90 million customers in less than 10 years, largely through word-of-mouth referrals. We believe the company’s superior product offering will drive continued share gains in large and growing markets.”
Overall NU ranks 10th on our list of billionaire Phillipe Laffont’s top stock picks. You can visit Billionaire Phillipe Laffont’s Top 10 “Mostly AI” Stock Picks to see the other stocks that are on hedge funds’ radar. While we acknowledge the potential of NU 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 more promising than NU but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.