Forager Funds Management, a boutique fund manager firm, published its fourth-quarter 2020 Investor Letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 38.26% was recorded by the fund for the calendar year of 2020, above its MSCI AC World Net benchmark that returned 5.90%. You can view the fund’s top 10 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
Forager Funds Management, in their Q4 2020 Investor Letter said that majority of their equities are invested in Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE), a company which they value the most as of the moment. Whole Earth Brands, Inc. is an international food company that currently has a $468 million market cap. For the past 3 months, FREE delivered a decent 44.95% return and settled at $12.19 per share at the closing of January 25th.
Here is what Forager Funds Management has to say about Whole Earth Brands, Inc. in their Investor Letter:
“Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE), which is now the Fund’s largest single investment. Whole Earth is a branded consumer goods company focused on natural and artificial sweetener products, as well as being a leading global supplier of licorice extract and derivative products — a business that has been around for 150 years.
You may be familiar with some of the company’s portfolio of zero calorie, low calorie and natural and sweetener products, including the Whole Earth, Equal, Canderel and Pure Via brands. These products are generally the number one brand in Australia, Europe, South Africa and the United States.
It operates both of its businesses globally, distributing table top sweetener products into the retail, food service and e commerce channels while supplying licorice products to some of the largest manufacturers in the world, including Haribo and Hershey’s. The business’s global platform distributes to more than 100 countries with six manufacturing facilities of its own and a broad network of distribution partners and co-manufacturers.
Whole Earth should benefit from consumer trends that continue to shift towards natural alternatives and “free-from” additive
solutions. Moreover, the natural sweetener growth opportunity in emerging markets is significant and the company is currently expanding into the Indian and Chinese markets. Global sweetener penetration sits at only 3% in those markets, versus just over 12% in Europe and North America.In today’s stock market, these types of reliable businesses with growth prospects are not cheap. But Whole Earth Brands is an exception.”
Copyright: bialasiewicz / 123RF Stock Photo
FREE delivered a decent 20.22% return in the past 12 months. However, our calculations showed that Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE) does not belong to the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
