Ariel Investments, an investment management company, released its “Ariel Focus Fund” third-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Due to the economy’s resilience and forecasters’ expectations of a soft landing, all major U.S. indices enjoyed gains in the third quarter. In the third quarter, the fund returned +10.61%, outperforming the +9.43% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index and the +5.89% return for the S&P 500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Ariel Focus Fund highlighted stocks like Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) offers products and services that address enterprise information technology environments. The one-month return of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) was 8.47%, and its shares gained 66.21% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 12, 2024, Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) stock closed at $189.58 per share with a market capitalization of $525.338 billion.
Ariel Focus Fund stated the following regarding Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Global leader in enterprise software, Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) also traded higher in the period. ORCL is benefitting from artificial intelligence (AI) demand as well as its ability to provide cloud-based infrastructure for data centers. Relatedly, the company announced a new multi-cloud database partnership with AWS, adding to its existing relationships with Microsoft and Google. These partnerships have fueled excellent growth and raised management’s longer-term (full year 2029) revenue target to over $104 billion, implying 16% annual growth. These results and outlook continue to support our view that ORCL’s positioning as the leading provider of database software and cloud-based infrastructure is entrenched, making it a key beneficiary of global demand for generative AI development.”
A team of IT professionals meticulously crafting a large-scale enterprise performance management system.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) ranks 27th in our list of the 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 93 hedge fund portfolios held Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) at the end of the second quarter which was 96 in the previous quarter. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) reported a $13.3 billion in revenues in the fiscal first quarter of 2025, up 8% from last year. While we acknowledge the potential of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) 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 Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) and shared Polen Focus Growth Strategy’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.