Oakmark Funds, advised by Harris Associates, released its “Oakmark Equity and Income Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund delivered -0.20% during the quarter compared to the Lipper Balanced Fund Index’s -1.24% return. The equity portfolio returned 1.28% in the quarter, compared to 2.41% for the S&P 500 Index. The fixed-income portfolio returned -2.25% compared to -3.06% for the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. The fund has allocated 59.3% in equities, 39.5% in fixed income, and 1.2% in cash. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2024.
Oakmark Equity and Income Fund highlighted stocks like Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) in the Q4 2024 investor letter. Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) is a data, analytics, and technology company. The one-month return of Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) was -1.75%, and its shares gained 3.31% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On January 14, 2025, Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) stock closed at $252.34 per share with a market capitalization of $31.28 billion.
Oakmark Equity and Income Fund stated the following regarding Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) is one of the leading U.S. credit bureaus. The company competes in a triopoly with TransUnion and Experian, all of which possess valuable data sets, entrenched competitive positions and pricing power. In our view, what separates Equifax from its peers is its proprietary Workforce Solutions data-base, which is now its largest, most profitable and most differentiated business. Workforce Solutions is an income and employment database that benefits from network effects and is used to evaluate the creditworthiness of a consumer in real time. In our view, the company’s earnings are currently depressed due to the significant downturn in mortgage activity. We expect earnings to increase materially when mortgage demand recovers to mid-cycle levels. As a result, we were able to purchase this high-quality, well-managed company at an attractive multiple of normal earnings power and a discount to the historical transaction multiples of other information services companies with similar growth rates.”
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Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 43 hedge fund portfolios held Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) at the end of the third quarter which was 38 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) 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 Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) and shared the list of best consulting stocks to buy. 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.