RiverPark Funds, an investment management firm, published its “RiverPark Large Growth Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The RiverPark Large Growth Fund (the “Fund”) returned 2.5% for the first quarter, while its benchmarks, the S&P 500 Total Return Index (“S&P”) advanced 6.2%, the Russell 1000 Growth Total Return Index (“RLG”) returned 0.9%. In contrast, the Russell 1000 Value Total Return Index returned 11.2%. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.
RiverPark Large Growth Fund, in their Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) and shared their insights on the company. Square, Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based financial services and digital payments company that currently has a $113.2 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, SQ delivered a 14.41% return, extending its 12-month gains to 333.79%. As of April 19, 2021, the stock closed at $245.33 per share.
Here is what RiverPark Large Growth Fund has to say about Square, Inc. in their Q1 2021 investor letter:
“We established a position in leading Financial Technology provider Square during the quarter. Through one integrated system, SQ is a hybrid of two businesses: its Seller Business (charging small and medium-sized businesses about 3% for transaction payment processing, plus other services such as instant funds access, and software for everything from customer engagement to payroll), and its Cash App (originally for person-to-person cash transfers and now a growing digital financial services provider for consumers).
The combined business has grown gross profit at a 37% CAGR over the past five years to $2.7 billion (due to pass through costs, gross profit is more reflective of top-line growth) and we believe that the company has an enormous long-term runway, as it has less than a 2% share of a more than $160 billion market. It is our view that the company’s Cash App (which has grown
from nothing in 2015 to $1.2 billion gross profit last year) has a particularly large opportunity with its powerful ecosystem of digital financial services including digital wallets, direct deposits, stock trading, bitcoin trading, and business and tax services, which are all relatively new. The vast majority of Cash App’s more than 36 million users are younger and, importantly, are willing to replace their bank and other financial services accounts with the app.We estimate that the company can grow its gross profit more than 30% and EBITDA more than 50% annually for the foreseeable future, and while most of the company’s current profit is from its Seller Business, we believe most of Square’s future value will be from its Cash App business.”
Our calculations show that Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Square, Inc. was in 89 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 73 funds in the third quarter. SQ delivered a 9.88% return in the past 3 months.
The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 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. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
