Mar Vista Investment Partners, LLC, an investment management company, released the “Mar Vista U.S. Quality Select Strategy” first quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. US stocks suffered their worst quarter in three years, with the steepest losses since 2022, due to tariff concerns and economic stagnation fears. In the first quarter, the strategy returned -3.05% net-of-fees compared to -4.49% and -4.27% returns for the Russell 1000® Index and the S&P 500® Index, respectively. Stock selection within healthcare, communication services, and consumer staples detracted from the fund’s performance during the quarter. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its first-quarter 2025 investor letter, Mar Vista U.S. Quality Select Strategy highlighted stocks such as Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO). Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) designs and develops various semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. The one-month return of Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) was 2.86%, and its shares gained 36.67% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On April 23, 2025, Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) stock closed at $176.91 per share with a market capitalization of $831.822 billion.
Mar Vista U.S. Quality Select Strategy stated the following regarding Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“We maintain a positive outlook on Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) shares, despite recent stock price pressure stemming from two key concerns: (1) uncertainty around potential tariffs and the impact on global growth, and (2) investor skepticism regarding the return profile of large-scale AI capex investments by hyperscalers. This skepticism has been amplified by the efficiency gains recently demonstrated by DeepSeek, an unknown Chinese software company, which developed a competitive large language model at a much lower cost. These efficiency gains stoked fears that hyperscalers may have overbuilt AI infrastructure.
Broadcom maintains a strong competitive position in the custom AI ASIC market, as well as a disciplined capital allocation, most recently reflected in the VMWare acquisition. That deal is already delivering better than-expected top-line growth and margin expansion. Broadcom is the leading provider of custom AI ASICs and has been steadily diversifying its customer base beyond its initial anchor client, Alphabet. Many hyperscalers are interested in developing custom ASICs, which are tailored to specific computing tasks, given their lower costs and attractive performance attributes relative to general-purpose GPUs from providers like NVIDIA.
While we remain constructive on Broadcom’s long-term prospects, we did trim our position earlier in the quarter at higher levels to reallocate capital toward a more favorable risk-reward opportunity. Nonetheless, Broadcom remains a core holding in our portfolio and offers an attractive margin of safety. We believe the company is well-positioned to grow intrinsic value by +20% over the intermediate term.”
A technician working at a magnified microscope, developing a new integrated circuit.
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) is in 12th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 161 hedge fund portfolios held Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 128 in the third quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) 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 covered Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and shared the list of AI stocks analysts are talking about. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2025 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.