L1 Capital, an investment management firm, released its “L1 Capital International Fund” third quarter 2023 investor letter, a copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the September 2023 quarter, the fund outperformed the Index by 4.0% returning 3.6% (in Australian dollars). Year-to-date, the fund returned 28.3% (in Australian dollars), outperforming the Index by 11.6%. Please check the top five holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2023.
L1 Capital International Fund highlighted stocks like Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) in the third quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) provides online travel and restaurant booking services. On November 29, 2023, Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) stock closed at $3,126.29 per share. One-month return of Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) was 10.13%, and its shares gained 51.74% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) has a market capitalization of $109.076 billion.
L1 Capital International Fund made the following comment about Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) in its Q3 2023 investor letter:
“Following significant under-performance, some high-quality businesses in these sectors are now becoming more attractive from a valuation perspective – in our language they are now getting warmer on our Bench of potential investments.
Our ‘all-weather’ portfolio centred around our unique definition of ‘quality’ delivered strong performance in the September quarter. Three companies positively contributed over 0.5% (in Australian dollars) to the Fund’s returns for the quarter (Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG), Intuit and Natural Resource Partners, in alphabetical order), and another three companies almost reached this level of positive contribution. No companies detracted from the Portfolio’s returns by 0.5% or more.
As part of our travels during the quarter (see page 6) we had the opportunity to meet with management of both Booking Holdings and Intuit. We continue to view both companies as exceptionally well managed.
Booking Holdings, the world’s leading online travel agency, continues to benefit from a strong global travel environment with particular strength in Europe, Booking Holdings’ core market. Fears of peak ‘revenge travel’ following COVID-19 lockdowns have been misplaced in our view. We assess current travel volumes to be only slightly elevated compared to pre-COVID-19 trends, with some regions, particularly outbound travel from China, still relatively depressed. Anyone who has travelled anywhere recently will be nodding when we say hotel rates have increased meaningfully in recent times. Accommodation providers are generally doing quite well, but the increased hotel rates have been necessary to offset inflation in costs such as employee salaries and additional cleaning services. As Booking Holdings ‘clips the ticket’ of accommodation spend, the company has benefitted from increased average daily hotel rates. Importantly, Booking Holdings continues to invest in its business, improving the reach, quality and range of services it provides, resulting in gains in market share and an extension of its industry leadership position. Booking Holdings is now more fairly valued by the market, but still provides attractive base case risk-adjusted returns and remains one of the larger investments in the Fund.”
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Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 81 hedge fund portfolios held Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) at the end of third quarter which was 78 in the previous quarter.
We discussed Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) in another article and shared the list of best growth stocks to buy according to George Soros. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2023 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.