Andvari Associates, an investment management firm, released its first-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the first quarter the fund returned 7.2% net of fees compared to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF’s 4.3% decline. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2025.
In its first quarter 2025 investor letter, Andvari Associates emphasized stocks such as Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM). Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) tobacco company working to deliver a smoke-free future. The one-month return of Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) was 0.87%, and its shares gained 69.74% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On April 9, 2025, Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) stock closed at $151.80 per share with a market capitalization of $232.03 billion.
Andvari Associates stated the following regarding Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Last year, Andvari made its first investments in tobacco companies with the purchase of Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) and Altria. At the time of our purchase, Philip Morris and Altria had underperformed the S&P 500 over the prior 5- and 10-year periods. Both traded at low valuations and with high dividend yields. But thanks to following the industry o and on for 10+ years, and thanks to many discussions with long-time shareholders of the companies, Andvari felt the time was right to make the plunge. The timing could not have been much better for us as both companies have so far contributed positively to Andvari’s recent overall performance.
The problem—or the feature, depending on your perspective—with the tobacco industry has been a declining population of cigarette smokers in developed countries. Over the last four or five years, the decline in these smoking populations has accelerated, which in part explains the poor share performance of the tobacco companies between 2017 and 2023. Despite this, the tobacco companies have maintained, or slowly increased, their revenues and profits with regular price increases on cigarettes…” (Click here to read the full text)
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Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 102 hedge fund portfolios held Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 75 in the third quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) 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.
We covered Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) in another article, where we shared the list of stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2025 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.