Ariel Investments, an investment management company, released its “Ariel Focus Fund” second-quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. While uncertainty is high and volatility is expected to remain elevated, the firm considers these risks as short-term disturbances within the scope of its long-term investment strategy. In the second quarter, the fund returned -3.37% and underperformed the -2.17% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index and the +4.28% return for the S&P 500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Ariel Focus Fund highlighted stocks like Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) offers products and services that address enterprise information technology environments. The one-month return of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) was -1.13%, and its shares gained 13.84% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 28, 2024, Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) stock closed at $137.88 per share with a market capitalization of $379.978 billion.
Ariel Focus Fund stated the following regarding Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“Global leader in enterprise software, Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL), was the top contributor to relative performance in the period. ORCL is benefitting from a significant expansion in artificial intelligence (AI) demand and strong booking growth with OpenAI. We believe these results highlight ORCL’s ability to effectively cross-sell and upsell apps and infrastructure, as well as the emergence of the company’s cloud platform as a competitive offering. In addition, ORCL announced a meaningful partnership with Google Cloud mirroring its existing partnership with Microsoft Azure. The company’s ability to leverage the services of both companies without having to rewrite the application helps differentiate and improve ORCL’s positioning in the database market. Furthermore, management provided strong guidance for fiscal 2025, including a double-digit increase in total revenue, with growth accelerating throughout the year.”
A team of IT professionals meticulously crafting a large-scale enterprise performance management system.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) ranks 27th in our list of the 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 93 hedge fund portfolios held Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) at the end of the second quarter which was 96 in the previous quarter. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) achieved a 6% growth in full fiscal year revenue, reaching $53 billion. While we acknowledge the potential of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as NVIDIA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we discussed Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) and shared the list of AI stocks analysts are recommending. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) was one of the major contributors to the performance of Mar Vista’s Global strategy in Q2 2024. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 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.