Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Equity markets surged at the beginning of 2024 in anticipation of the US economy entering a “goldilocks” scenario – a soft landing combined with decreasing inflation, potentially leading to a cut in interest rates by the Fed. In the first quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned 9.43%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of 9.42%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned 9.48%, compared to a return of 7.58% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Artisan Small Cap Fund highlighted stocks like MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) provides artificial intelligence-powered enterprise analytics software and services. The one-month return of MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) was 62.93%, and its shares gained 455.43% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 28, 2024, MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) stock closed at $1,675.35 per share with a market capitalization of $29.716 billion.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“Extremely strong returns by two sector constituents, Super Micro Computer and MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), contributed 393bps (52%) to the index’s return and gave them the largest combined weighting in the index’s history. Regarding MicroStrategy, the company started the year with a 0.6% index weighting and a market value of $10.6 billion and ended the quarter at 1.9% and $28.7 billion. Our decision to avoid this company comes down to a lack of conviction in its franchise characteristics. The stock has worked this year due to a rebound in the price of bitcoin. Since 2020, MicroStrategy has been focused on converting its cash and cash equivalent holdings, as well as issuing debt, to fund the purchase of bitcoin, which now totals ~$15 billion.”
A software engineer wearing a headset, collaborating with a remote team on a project.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR), the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, currently owning 214,400 Bitcoins. In the first quarter, the Bitcoin holdings of the company increased in value by $5.4 billion as the price rose from $42,500 to $71,000. Total revenues of MicroStrategy were $115.2 million in the quarter, down about 5% year-over-year.
MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 22 hedge fund portfolios held MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) at the end of the first quarter which was 16 in the previous quarter.
In another article, we discussed MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) and shared the list of unstoppable growth stocks to buy. MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) was the top contributor Miller Value Income Strategy in the first quarter 2024. ClearBridge Small Cap Growth Strategy also commented about MicroStrategy Incorporated (NASDAQ:MSTR) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as Microsoft but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
