ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge All Cap Value Strategy” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The strategy outperformed its benchmark, the Russell 3000 Value Index in the second quarter, due to strong stock selection in the IT and consumer discretionary sectors, which overcame weakness in consumer staples stocks. Despite significant market growth, the market’s breadth is dismal as the demand for AI businesses is starving the rest of the industry and raising concerns about how and when leadership will shift. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
ClearBridge All Cap Value Strategy highlighted stocks like WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) offers business-to-business distribution, logistics services, and supply chain solutions. The one-month return of WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) was 2.59%, and its shares gained 14.50% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 23, 2024, WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) stock closed at $167.77 per share with a market capitalization of $8.247 billion.
ClearBridge All Cap Value Strategy stated the following regarding WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Opportunities to improve the return profile of the portfolio, increase resiliency and diversify our risk exposure abound, and we are finding evidence of great values among mid cap names. These companies, with 10%+ FCF yields, durable growth prospects and sound competitive positions, are trading at truly distressed valuations, much to our benefit. For example, new addition WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC), an electrical and broadband distributor, should enjoy mid-single-digit end market growth, likely modest growth above that of the market given its leading scale, and a wave of FCF once the supply chain for things like transformers loosens. Despite a depressed valuation, the company is levered to many of the same themes such as electrification and data center buildouts as stocks with much higher multiples. We believe it is merely a matter of when, and not if, it catches up.”
A team of professionals operating high and medium voltage project design.
WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 51 hedge fund portfolios held WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) at the end of the second quarter which was 50 in the previous quarter. The second quarter results of WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) fell short of expectations (see the details here). While we acknowledge the potential of WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) 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 WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC) and shared best industrial distribution stocks to buy. 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.