Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Health Care Fund” second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund declined 2.55% (Institutional Shares) in the quarter compared to a 1.02% decline for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index (benchmark) and a 3.22% gain for the Russell 3000 Index (the Index). The underperformance in the quarter was due to active sub-industry/market cap weights. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Health Care Fund highlighted stocks like Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) is a healthcare technology company. The one-month return of Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) was 22.77%, On August 1, 2024, Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) stock closed at $39.28 per share with a market capitalization of $6.42 billion.
Baron Health Care Fund stated the following regarding Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“We initiated a small position in Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM), an intelligent diagnostics and health care data company. Tempus has two synergistic business units: Genomics and Data & Other. Within the Genomics business, Tempus provides diagnostic tests, particularly for cancer treatment selection. Tempus’ labs sequence the tumor’s genome and transcriptome (gene expression) and can help oncologists select the best treatment for their patient. We think the cancer treatment selection sequencing market is underpenetrated and poised to continue to grow rapidly, and Tempus is well positioned as one of the leaders in this field. The genomics testing data also feeds into Tempus’ value as a data company. Tempus has amassed a huge (over 200 petabytes) proprietary multimodal dataset that combines clinical patient data (which includes clinical records, imaging data, etc., mostly from two-way collaborations with health systems) with genomic testing data from the Genomics business. In total, the company’s dataset includes approximately 7.7 million clinical records, over 1 million imaging records, over 910,000 matched clinical and molecular dataset profiles, and over 970,000 samples sequenced. In addition to using this data to empower more intelligent diagnostics, Tempus also licenses this data to biopharmaceutical companies who use it to design smarter clinical trials and identify potential new drug targets. Tempus works with 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in this capacity and has disclosed 9-figure deals with 3 biopharmaceutical companies. We think this proprietary dataset is unique with meaningful barriers to entry, and brings meaningful value to biopharmaceutical R&D.”
A healthcare professional in a meeting with a patient discussing care options using digital technology.
Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. While we acknowledge the potential of Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) 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 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.