Whole Earth Brands (FREE) is ‘Very Cheap’ Says Maran Capital

Maran Capital Management LLC, a value-driven, concentrated, long-term investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2020 Investor Letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 14.8% was recorded by the fund for the Q4 of 2020, outperforming its S&P 500 benchmark that delivered a 12.15% return, but below its Russell 2000 index that returned 31.4%. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Maran Capital Management, in their Q4 2020 Investor Letter said that they continue to hold their position in Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE) because of the ‘Buy & Build’ strategy of the company. Whole Earth Brands, Inc. is a multinational food company that has a $461.1 million market cap. For the past 3 months, FREE delivered a decent 43.63% return and settled at $11.99 per share at the closing of February 2nd.

Here is what Maran Capital Management has to say about Whole Earth Brands, Inc. in their investor letter:

“Whole Earth Brands announced two acquisitions during the fourth quarter, furthering its buy and build strategy. I continue to believe FREE is very inexpensive at ~8x EBITDA (pro forma for the acquisitions) in a world in which many packaged food peers (including those with low/no growth) trade for 12-16x multiples. Whole Earth Brands is aligned with the mega consumer trend of health and wellness and is growing across its portfolio. I think eventually the market will take notice.”

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Last October 2020, we published an article telling that Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE) was in 23 hedge fund portfolios, its all time high statistics. FREE delivered a 17.47% return in the past 12 months.

Our calculations show that Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: FREE) does not belong in our list of 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

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.