Cooper Investors, an investment management firm, released its “Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund returned -5.5% in the second quarter, compared to a 3.2% return for the benchmark. Year to date, the fund returned 7.4% compared to 19.4% for the benchmark. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund highlighted stocks like Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) is a route-based services provider. The one-month return of Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) was 0.63%, and its shares lost 19.72% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 12, 2024, Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) stock closed at $30.46 per share with a market capitalization of $15.3 billion.
Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund stated the following regarding Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“The market was not so kind to Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO), the global leading pest control business undergoing a large integration in the US. Organic growth in North America of +1.5% in Q1 was half a point shy of management’s guidance of 2% and the shares fell ~10%. This reaction is understandable as trust is shaky right now – management are working through execution challenges in the initial integration of Terminix which has dragged on local sales momentum despite a strong market (peers growing 6%+).
Yet the valuation was already reeling from recent trends with the implied value of Terminix now close to nil. Consider the market cap of Rentokil on 13th December 2021 (the day before Terminix was announced) was £11.5bn, valuing the combined group at ~18x EV/EBITDA – a fair price for a leading scale player in a recurring and growing business services niche (and undemanding relative to main peer Rollins at 31x)…” (Click here to read the full text)
A specialist cleaning service team in full protective equipment removing hazardous waste.
Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 20 hedge fund portfolios held Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) at the end of the first quarter which was 15 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) 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 Rentokil Initial plc (NYSE:RTO) and shared the list of companies that are facing activist pressure. 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.
