Fiduciary Management Inc. (FMI), an independent money management firm, released its “FMI International Equity Strategy (Unhedged)” fourth-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The investment philosophy of the firm is to invest in durable business franchises that are selling at a discount to their intrinsic value. In the fourth quarter, the strategy returned -7.24% (gross) and -7.41% (net) compared to -8.36% return for the iShares MSCI EAFE ETF. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
FMI International Equity Strategy highlighted stocks like ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in the fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is a clinical research organization. The one-month return of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) was 6.88%, and its shares lost 14.42% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 10, 2025, ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) stock closed at $218.22 per share with a market capitalization of $18.016 billion.
FMI International Equity Strategy stated the following regarding ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is a global contract research organization (CRO) that provides outsourced clinical trial design, enrollment, operations, and data validation services to pharmaceutical and biotech clients. ICON specializes largely in providing services for clinical trials in phases 1-4 of drug development. Trials are becoming more complex, patients are harder to find and enroll, and sponsors are ever mindful of the need for incremental efficiency, all of which play into the strengths of an outsourced development model. Following its merger with PRA Health Sciences in 2021, ICON is now positioned as a high-quality contender with competitive differentiation within the CRO industry. Quality of output, resource depth and breadth, and a global footprint combine to help ICON win incremental business. The firm has commercial relationships with 17 of the top 20 pharma companies. Capital availability has tightened, and the pharma industry has been rationalizing research pipelines for the better part of a year. As a result, CRO industry growth has slowed to a trickle. In what appears to be a cyclical trough, the current valuation provides an attractive entry point. We initiated a 2.0% in December 2024.”
A laboratory setting with a team of scientists working on a clinical trial.
ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 48 hedge fund portfolios held ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) at the end of the third quarter which was 54 in the previous quarter. ICON Public Limited Company’s (NASDAQ:ICLR) third quarter revenue was $2.03 billion, represents a year-on-year decrease of 1.2% or 1% on a constant currency basis. While we acknowledge the potential of ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) 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 ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR) and shared ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy’s views on the company. 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.