Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Value Fund” first quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund outperformed the Russell 1000 Value Index. Its Investor Class fund ARTLX returned 7.88%, Advisor Class fund APDLX posted a return of 7.93%, and Institutional Class fund APHLX returned 8.02% in the quarter, compared to a 1.01% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. In Q1, sector allocation and stock selection turned out to be positive. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Artisan Value Fund highlighted stocks like The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut, The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) provides health services. On May 23, 2023, The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) stock closed at $251.92 per share. One-month return of The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) was 1.51%, and its shares lost 5.20% of their value over the last 52 weeks. The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) has a market capitalization of $74.536 billion.
Artisan Value Fund made the following comment about The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:
“The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) delivered strong operating results that came in well ahead of the company’s initial guidance, yet the stock has continued to sell off since the beginning of 2023. It seems there are a few reasons for it: 1) concerns over the government targeting pharmacy benefit managers and trying to directly negotiate drug prices under the president’s new budget, 2) a potential normalization of elective procedures that increases medical costs, 3) a rotation by dedicated health care investors toward medical technology and technology areas and away from the safety of big pharma and HMOs, 4) disenrollment trends as it relates to the commercial book of business heading into a potential downturn, and 5) selling in the space as we approach another presidential election in 2024. Pick your poison, but the selling has taken the stock price back to its levels of mid-2022. Our investment case hasn’t changed. Cigna is one of the few managed care organizations in the US with the scale and size to compete effectively. In 2022, free cash flow was $7.4 billion, up $1.3 billion from 2021. Cigna paid down $3.5 billion of debt, repurchased $7.6 billion in stock and sold its life, accident and supplemental benefits business in Asia to Chubb that helped fund the share repurchases. In short, the business in performing well, and management is smartly allocating capital. Additionally, the stock is selling for less than 11X next year’s earnings, which is inexpensive.”
The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 79 hedge fund portfolios held The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) at the end of first quarter 2023 which was 76 in the previous quarter.
We discussed The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI) in another article and shared the list of stocks in billionaire Ken Griffin’s 2023 portfolio. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 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.
