ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy” fourth quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the fourth quarter, the strategy outperformed its benchmark, the Russell 1000 Growth Index. The strategy gained in seven out of nine sectors it invested in the quarter on an absolute basis. Healthcare and industrials sectors were the primary contributors while the consumer discretionary sector detracted from the performance. Overall stock selection and sector allocation contributed to the strategy’s performance on a relative basis. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2022.
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in the fourth quarter 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is an electric vehicle and energy generation and storage systems manufacturer. On March 6, 2023, Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock closed at $193.81 per share. One-month return of Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) was -1.52%, and its shares lost 29.47% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) has a market capitalization of $613.234 billion.
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy made the following comment about Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:
“Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), meanwhile, also fits squarely within our earnings reset group. We took advantage of its enterprise multiple falling back to historic lows to initiate a starter position in the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles (EV) and developer of battery technologies. Tesla has a significant structural cost advantage in battery production, EV manufacturing and EV selling, which gives it industry-leading operating margins in EVs. As the auto cycle has softened, the stock has sold off substantially with the rest of the automakers, despite EVs continuing to have a secular growth advantage. Tesla has a clean balance sheet with negative net debt and enormous revenue growth, EBITDA growth and free cash flow generation. Its margin buffer also gives the company the ability to cut prices while still protecting earnings better than competitors, which should help support continued volume growth. There is also significant upside optionality driven by its software offerings, which we do not believe is currently priced into the stock.
That being said, Tesla is highly indexed to a flagging auto market and we expect its earnings outlook to worsen in the near term. We are also monitoring increasing EV competition and the recently emerging risks to the brand and management integrity raised by CEO Elon Musk’s actions at Twitter to determine future position size in the portfolio.”
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Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 91 hedge fund portfolios held Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) at the end of the fourth quarter which was 88 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in another article and shared Motley Fool’s high growth stock picks. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2022 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.
