Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Select Equity Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund returned -0.4% compared to a 4.28% return for the S&P 500 Index and a -2.2% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. Year-to-date the fund increased 10.4% compared to 15.3% and 6.6% return for the indexes. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Select Equity Fund highlighted stocks like Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) designs, manufactures, markets, refurbishes, and services semiconductor processing equipment. The one-month return of Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) was -8.17%, and its shares gained 32.16% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 19, 2024, Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) stock closed at $881.28 per share with a market capitalization of $114.899 billion.
Artisan Select Equity Fund stated the following regarding Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“The top contributors to performance for the quarter were Alphabet, Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) and Elevance. Lam Research shares rose 10% during the quarter and are up 67% over the past year, primarily due to optimism around the pending investment cycle in semiconductor capital expenditures. Lam is one of the largest equipment manufacturers used to make semiconductor chips. This equipment, commonly referred to as WFE (wafer fabrication equipment), is expected to experience significant growth due to a combination of a cyclical rebound in memory chips and growing demand for new AI-related chips. Lam’s product portfolio is particularly well positioned to benefit from both trends and should grow even faster than the overall market. Its shares now trade at ~30X prior peak earnings, which suggests this dynamic is well understood by the market and is mostly priced in.”
A technician operating an automated semiconductor processing machine with laser accuracy.
Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 84 hedge fund portfolios held Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) at the end of the second quarter which was 78 in the previous quarter. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) delivered solid results in the June quarter, exceeding expectations (see the details here). While we acknowledge the potential of Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) 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 Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) and shared the list of most important AI companies you should pay attention to. 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.
