Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Discovery Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, the fund appreciated 13.55% (Institutional Shares), outperforming the 8.41% return for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. Year-to-date, the fund returned 9.50% compared to the index’s 13.22% return. The firm was pleased with the fund’s performance in the third quarter and believes that the bear market in small-cap growth stocks, which began in February 2021, may finally end. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Discovery Fund highlighted stocks like Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) is a healthcare technology company. The one-month return of Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) was 16.69%, and its shares gained 47.02% of their value over the last 3 months. On November 6, 2024, Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) stock closed at $56.97 per share with a market capitalization of $8.97 billion.
Baron Discovery Fund stated the following regarding Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Shares of Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) contributed to performance. Tempus is a cancer diagnostics company that provides genomic testing results. Tempus has also amassed an over 200 petabyte proprietary multimodal dataset that combines clinical patient data with genomic testing data. In addition to using this data to empower more intelligent diagnostics for its own tests, Tempus also licenses this data to biopharmaceutical companies which use it to design smarter clinical trials and identify potential new drug targets. We think this proprietary dataset is unique with meaningful barriers to entry, and brings meaningful value to biopharmaceutical R&D. As we mentioned in the letter from last quarter, shares have been incredibly volatile. We took advantage of this volatility to buy a meaningful position when shares sold off into the low $20’s per share from an IPO price of $37. When shares spiked into the mid-$70’s (likely due to short sellers covering losses as shares rose), we took profits on a meaningful portion of the investment as we believed valuation had become stretched (shares now trade in the high $40’s to low $50’s level). We like our position sizing now, and would add to the position at lower valuations. We believe that Tempus has significant growth ahead of it and we are excited about its unique business model.”
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Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 18 hedge fund portfolios held Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) at the end of the second quarter which was 0 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) 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 Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) and shared the list of top trending AI stocks on latest analyst ratings and news. Baron Health Care Fund initiated a small position in Tempus AI, Inc (NASDAQ:TEM) in the previous quarter. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 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.