Middle Coast Investing, an investment advisor firm, released its second-quarter investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. It was a good and active quarter for the firm. The portfolio’s price to earnings for the trailing 12 months (TTM) was 20.8. Cash and equivalents accounted for 13.4% of the portfolio at the end of the quarter, with an estimated average yield of 3.9%. This compares to 14.7% of the portfolio and a 3.9% yield at the end of Q1. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Middle Coast Investing highlighted stocks like Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) designs and manufactures products for the aerospace, defense, and electronics industries. The one-month return of Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) was 17.07%, and its shares gained 14.99% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 15, 2024, Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) stock closed at $21.33 per share with a market capitalization of $738.92 million.
Middle Coast Investing stated the following regarding Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO): One thing I try to do is apply what I know from one stock to another. Aercap has been a long-time holding, and one of the reasons it is attractive to hold onto at a fair price is the huge backlog in planes that need to be built and sold to airlines. Boeing’s problems, the pandemic, supply chain issues, and so on have slowed delivery of planes and jets (Airbus is also struggling to get up to its production goals). That delay is good for Aercap’s business as the world’s biggest owner of planes, an in-demand commodity, but at some point, the manufacturers will have to figure it out.
Steady demand for planes, stretching out for years, will be good for Astronics. Astronics supplies the seat-back video and power systems you will see on planes while traveling, and leads the market. It also has a small part of its business with the military, both in aerospace supplies and test systems. The company’s balance sheet is shakier than I like, but it should have something like 10% revenue growth per year for quite a while, and is at the point where it should start to make real profit from that. It is not cheap at the moment, but I think it is cheap based on how much money it will make over the next 4 years, and where that will leave it going forward.
I should say I got this idea from an old colleague and friend, Vince Martin at Overlooked Alpha. That newsletter is an example of a go-to source I subscribe to for ideas.”
A complex assembly line producing aircraft structures for aerospace applications.
Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 21 hedge fund portfolios held Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) at the end of the first quarter which was 20 in the previous quarter. Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) generated sales of $185 million in the quarter, up 18% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) 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 Astronics Corporation (NASDAQ:ATRO) and shared the list of best small-cap defense stocks to invest in. 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.
