Oakmark Funds, advised by Harris Associates, released its “Oakmark Global Fund” fourth quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The Oakmark Global Fund showed robust absolute gains in the fourth quarter. The fund returned 7.56% in the quarter compared to an 11.42% Return for the MSCI World Index. For the calendar year, the fund returned 17.25% compared to 23.79% for the benchmark. In addition, you can check the top 5 holdings of the fund to know its best picks in 2023.
In its Q4 2023 investor letter, Oakmark Global Fund featured stocks such as The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR). Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) is a food and drug retailer. On January 8, 2024, The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) stock closed at $45.97 per share. One-month return of The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) was 3.89%, and its shares lost 0.02% of their value over the last 52 weeks. The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) has a market capitalization of $33.072 billion.
In its fourth quarter 2023 investor letter, Oakmark Global Fund stated the following regarding The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR):
“The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) (U.S.) is the second-largest grocery retailer in America, behind only Walmart. Although the grocery industry is highly competitive, Kroger’s scale advantages allow it to offer a more compelling value proposition than smaller peers and earn higher returns on capital. In recent years, the market has assigned Kroger a lower multiple due to concerns that e-commerce would disrupt traditional brick-and-mortar grocery businesses. However, we believe Kroger’s performance through the pandemic highlighted that its store footprint, distribution infrastructure, technology investments and strong brand all position the company well for a world with higher online grocery adoption. The stock trades for just 10x our estimate of next year’s EPS, which we believe is attractive given Kroger’s competitive positioning and earnings growth outlook. The pending merger with Albertsons could accelerate the company’s earnings growth and produce additional scale advantages. If the merger is not approved, the company will have the capacity to return over 25% of its market cap to shareholders.”
A busy grocery store aisle stocked with the company’s weight management products.
The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 41 hedge fund portfolios held The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) at the end of third quarter which was 43 in the previous quarter.
We discussed The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) in another article and shared the list of most profitable food stocks. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.