Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its “Polen Global Growth Strategy” fourth-quarter 2022 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The fund returned 6.37% net in the fourth quarter compared to a return of 9.76% for the MSCI ACW Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2022.
Polen Global Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) in the Q4 2022 investor letter. Headquartered in New York, New York, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) is a manufacturer of skin care, hair care, and other beauty products. On February 8, 2023, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) stock closed at $259.19 per share. One-month return of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) was -1.17%, and its shares lost 17.88% of their value over the last 52 weeks. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) has a market capitalization of $92.588 billion.
Polen Global Growth Strategy made the following comment about The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) in its Q4 2022 investor letter:
“The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) is the leader in prestige beauty, which is the only category it sells in. In fact, one of the only differences between Estée and L’Oréal, which we also own, is that more than a third of L’Oréal’s sales are mass-market products. We view these companies as a global duopoly and a combined position. We originally purchased Estée Lauder for Global Growth in Sept 2020. We then sold it purely due to valuation reasons a year later, trading at over 45x earnings. We were able to purchase it back this quarter at ~28x earnings and believe it is an even stronger business today than when we initially purchased it in 2020. Estée generates most revenues outside the U.S. (>70%) and operates in over 150 countries. The pandemic has enabled the company to accelerate a shift to more direct-to-consumer sales. In 2019 online as a percentage of total sales was 15% and now it is well over double that, bringing with it higher margins, more control over their brands, and greater omnichannel and e-commerce capabilities. Like L’Oréal, Estée has become stronger in the face of changing basis of competition, and we feel that it is an extremely durable company with many years of compounding ahead.”
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The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 52 hedge fund portfolios held The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) at the end of the third quarter, which was 46 in the previous quarter.
We discussed The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE:EL) in another article and shared the list of best top-performing consumer staples stocks in January. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2022 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.