Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Health Care Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. The fund advanced 8.92% (Institutional Shares) in the quarter compared to an 8.52% gain for the Russell 3000 Health Care Index (benchmark) and a 10.56% increase for the S&P 500 Index. The fund rose 13.61% on an annualized basis since its inception on April 30, 2018, compared to an 11.45% gain for the benchmark and a 14.24% gain for the index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Health Care Fund featured stocks like IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) in the Q1 2024 investor letter. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) is a digital healthcare company. On April 22, 2024, IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) stock closed at $113.62 per share. One-month return of IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) was 0.55%, and its shares lost 14.25% of their value over the last 52 weeks. IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) has a market capitalization of $3.599 billion.
Baron Health Care Fund stated the following regarding IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“We initiated a position in IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC), a medical device manufacturer of cardiac monitoring solutions. The company offers a sleek patch (Zio XT) that goes on patients’ chests to monitor their heart rhythm, enabling the detection of atrial fibrillation, which is an abnormal heart rhythm that is responsible for 450,000 hospitalizations annually in the U.S. Traditional Holter monitors are bulky, have wires, and can only monitor for 48 hours. Zio XT, in comparison, is a small patch, does not have wires, and can monitor for up to 14 days. Half of arrhythmias occur more than 48 hours out, so the Zio XT has much better diagnostic yield than Holter monitors.
The company’s moat is not just the hardware, but also the algorithms they have built around their AI engine. IRhythm is able to automate the analysis of data collected from the patch and generate a summary report that is easy for clinicians to understand. Physicians can always double check to make a final decision, but they tend to agree with the AI’s finding 99% of the time. This is a flywheel that has been built up over time with 1.8 billion hours of curated heart rhythm data…” (Click here to read the full text)
A patient being monitored with a portable ECG device, showing the effectiveness of the company’s products.
IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. At the end of the fourth quarter, IRhythm Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:IRTC) was held by 24 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 24 in the previous quarter, according to our database. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 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.