If you are looking for the best ideas for your portfolio you may want to consider some of VGI Partners top stock picks. VGI Partners, an investment management firm, is bullish on Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock. In its FY 2019 investor letter – you can download a copy here – the firm discussed its investment thesis on Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock. Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) is the financial services company.
On July 30, 2019, VGI Partners had released its FY 2019 investor letter. Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock has posted a return of 23.3% in the trailing one year period, outperforming the S&P 500 Index which returned 11.4% in the same period. This suggests that the investment firm was right in its decision. On a year-to-date basis, Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock has risen by 11.1%.
In its FY 2019 investor letter, the firm reported that VGI Partners Global Investments Limited generated a 10.2% net return. Let’s take a look at comments made by VGI Partners about Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock in the Q2 2019 investor letter.
“MasterCard (NYSE: MA) contributed +2.2% to performance for the twelve months to 30 June 2019, with the share price increasing 34.6% over the course of the year.
MasterCard is the world’s second largest global payments processor, behind Visa. The industry is a duopoly with MasterCard and Visa controlling the majority of the world’s electronic payments. We believe that a strong secular trend toward electronic payments over cash and cheques will continue to drive both the revenue and earnings of MasterCard. Significant growth opportunities exist in developing countries as well as in new payment technologies (such as PayPass) that enable the more frequent use of electronic payments. We also view MasterCard as an attractive hedge against inflation – a higher cost of goods purchased will benefit the company’s bottom line as it charges an ad valorem fee and has significant pricing power.
At the time of MasterCard’s IPO in 2006, 85% of the world’s consumer payments by value were transacted in cash. Today, despite the widespread adoption of electronic payments in developed markets, the global share of cash transactions still stands at 85%. This has occurred as emerging market transaction growth has outpaced that of developed markets. In emerging markets, 92% of transactions are still carried out in cash. This dynamic provides MasterCard with an incredibly long runway of growth.
On top of the secular tailwinds, attractive industry structure and inflation protection, MasterCard also has a high-quality management team that has maintained a debt-free balance sheet despite investing heavily in future growth projects.”
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In Q2 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) stock increased by about 6% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers seem to agree with Mastercard’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) is ranked #7 among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 185% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 109 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
