Aristotle Capital Management, LLC, an investment management company, released its “International Equity Strategy” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Global equity markets had a modest decline at the end of the year, with the MSCI ACWI Index returning -0.99% in the fourth quarter, while, the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index fell by 5.10%. Aristotle Capital International Equity returned -6.91% gross of fees (-7.02% net of fees) in the fourth quarter outperforming the MSCI EAFE Index’s -8.11% return, and the MSCI ACWI ex USA Index’s -7.60% return. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
Aristotle International Equity Strategy highlighted stocks like Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) is a technology company that designs, manufactures, and distributes electronic equipment, instruments, devices, game consoles, and software for consumers, professionals and industrial markets. One-month return of Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) was -1.14%, and its shares gained 6.69% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 21, 2025, Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) stock closed at $20.90 per share with a market capitalization of $125.926 billion.
Aristotle International Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY), the global provider of videogames and consoles, image sensors, music, and movies, was a top contributor for the period. The company reported strong results driven by third-party gaming revenue and record PlayStation 5 console profitability. This was achieved despite lower console sales, which, in our view, exemplifies the strength of PlayStation’s network effects. PlayStation is the world’s largest gaming platform with 116 million monthly active users, making it an attractive market for game developers and allowing users to play the most advanced games at lower costs than PCs. In its Pictures segment, Crunchyroll (the anime business Sony acquired from AT&T in 2020) signed a distribution agreement with YouTube Primetime Channels, the market share leader in streaming services, which we believe will increase Crunchyroll’s subscriber base. Though a singular example, it illustrates management’s ability to better execute and further improve the segment’s profitability, a catalyst we previously identified. In addition, Sony reported improved sales of image sensors for mobile products as the global smartphone market continued its gradual recovery. Sony’s image sensor business has the largest global market share, and we believe, longer term, it is uniquely positioned to benefit from increasing demand for both autonomous driving technology in vehicles and improved image quality in smartphone cameras. As such, we continue to admire Sony’s capacity to build on its industry leadership and optimize its operations, which includes its plan for a partial spinoff of its Financial Services segment in October 2025.”
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Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 21 hedge fund portfolios held Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) at the end of the third quarter which was 29 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) 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.
We previously discussed Sony Group Corporation (NYSE:SONY) in another article, where we shared the list of best ADR stocks to invest in according to analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.