TimesSquare Capital Management, an equity investment management company, released its “U.S. Mid Cap Growth Strategy” second-quarter investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The equity markets performed well in the second quarter, as long as one held only a small number of the biggest, fastest-growing U.S. stocks. Given the Magnificent Seven’s superior performance, differences in growth and value among large caps were downplayed. There wasn’t much style diversity between mid-caps, small caps, or outside the U.S. In the second quarter, the strategy returned -2.94% (gross) and -3.14% (net) while the Russell Midcap Growth Index returned -3.21%. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
TimesSquare Capital U.S. Mid Cap Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) is a cloud platform provider for AI-driven digital business solutions. The one-month return of NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) was -6.21%, and its shares lost 8.67% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 12, 2024, NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) stock closed at $163.55 per share with a market capitalization of $10.282 billion.
TimesSquare Capital U.S. Mid Cap Growth Strategy stated the following regarding NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Among the wide variety of Information Technology companies, we prefer critical system providers, specialized component designers, systems that improve productivity or efficiency for their clients, and others that closely tie to increasing shares of corporate IT budgets. We witnessed shares in NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) slide by -34%. A cloud-based contact center software and compliance systems provider, NICE reported better-than-expected results. While earnings guidance was increased, projections for revenues were maintained. The market’s reaction seemed tied to overall weakness among software companies and NICE’s announcement that its CEO for the past decade plans to step down at the end of 2024. We see NICE benefiting from continued adoption of its new services, including AI-enabled ones, though want more information on the future CEO before rebuilding the position.”
A data scientist sitting in front of a monitor to review the performance of AI-driven digital business solutions.
NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 29 hedge fund portfolios held NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) at the end of the second quarter which was 26 in the previous quarter. In the second quarter of 2024, NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) reported $664 million in total revenues, represents a 14% increase from Q2 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) 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 NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) and shared the list of best Middle East and Africa stocks to buy according to analysts. NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ:NICE) detracted from the performance of Vulcan Value Partners in Q2 2024. 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.
