Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” first quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund outperformed the Russell 1000 Value Index. Its Investor Class fund ARTLX returned 7.88%, Advisor Class fund APDLX posted a return of 7.93%, and Institutional Class fund APHLX returned 8.02% in the quarter, compared to a 1.01% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In Q1, sector allocation and stock selection turned out to be positive. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks like U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is a financial services holding company. On May 23, 2023, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) stock closed at $31.14 per share. One-month return of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) was -1.21%, and its shares lost 39.17% of their value over the last 52 weeks. U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) has a market capitalization of $47.735 billion.
Artisan Value Fund made the following comment about U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“We are taking advantage of the current weakness in bank stocks. In Q1, we purchased PNC Financial Services and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB). These are banks we have known for years. They are well-managed and have solid capital positions and liquidity. At the end of Q1, we had an ~7% weighting in banks consisting of PNC, US Bancorp and Bank of America. All 3 are among the 10 largest US banks. We believe the range of probabilities and long-term outcomes are tilted in our favor at current prices but are proceeding with caution for several reasons. First, while we believe deposit-runs have likely burned themselves out, there is a non-zero risk these runs spread wider than our base case. Second, we expect more regulation in coming years which will increase the cost of doing business, potentially in exchange for higher FDIC limits. Third, at the very least we expect banks to cease buybacks for the rest of the year to build up liquidity and capital ratios. There is an increasingly more likely outcome that banks issue equity capital and preferred stock once markets stabilize. Fourth, with the banking system in shock, it will likely retrench, which will constrict capital to the US economy. Coupled with the “long and variable lags” of Fed policy, this will slow US economic growth beyond what private credit markets can make up.”
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U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 48 hedge fund portfolios held U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) at the end of first quarter 2023 which was 58 in the previous quarter.
We discussed U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) in another article and shared Madison Investors Fund’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 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.