Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Small Cap Fund” second-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy can be downloaded here. The fund returned -6.43% (Institutional Shares) in the quarter trailing the Russell 2000 Growth Index’s -2.92 % return and the broader Russell 3000 Index’s 3.22% return. The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index and the broader indices hit record highs in the second quarter. Still, the rally was extremely focused and narrow, with the mega-cap Magnificent Seven’s consistently excellent performance accounting for all of the larger-cap index gains while small-cap stocks declined. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Small Cap Fund highlighted stocks like Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) designs, manufactures, and services critical digital infrastructure technologies and life cycle services for data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial environments. The one-month return of Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) was -26.64%, and its shares gained 89.61% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 5, 2024, Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) stock closed at 67.73 per share with a market capitalization of $25.409 billion.
Baron Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) a leading provider of critical digital infrastructure for data centers, contributed during the quarter. As an industry leader in data center cooling and power management, Vertiv is poised to benefit from AI-driven growth in data center spend. The NVIDIA partner network, strong industry relationships, and broad product portfolio that Vertiv maintains enables its participation in the creation of the technology roadmap for the future of the data center. In addition, Vertiv is investing in its capacity to serve this growing end market more effectively. The company also has an extensive global service network to aid customers as they grow. We believe the company has durable competitive advantages and a flexible balance sheet to benefit from the expected significant capital investment in data centers for years to come. Vertiv reported very strong results for the March quarter, with orders up 60%, which highlighted the strong demand it is seeing for its products. We sold some of our position into strength after the runup from the positive report, but still hold a major position in the Fund as we see considerable upside in the shares over time.”
A close-up of a group of technicians working on complex data center systems.
Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 85 hedge fund portfolios held Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) at the end of the first quarter which was 75 in the previous quarter. Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) had a strong first half of 2024 and its organic sales increased by 8% in the second quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) 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 Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) and shared the top calls from Jim Cramer’s most recent portfolio. Baron Small Cap Fund shared optimism about Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) in its Q1 2024 investor letter. 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.