Polen Capital, an investment management company, released its “Polen Focus Growth Strategy” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The market turned volatile in the third quarter. In the third quarter, the fund returned 3.21% (gross) and 2.99% (net) compared to 3.19% for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and 5.89% for the S&P 500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Polen Focus Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that brings companies and customers together. The one-month return of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) was 18.51%, and its shares gained 54.50% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 11, 2024, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stock closed at $341.73 per share with a market capitalization of $326.694 billion.
Polen Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“In the third quarter, we purchased new positions in Apple and Oracle and eliminated our small positions in Nike and Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM). We exited our position in Salesforce to fund better opportunities in Shopify and MSCI. Salesforce is seeing slower revenue growth than we would have expected, given the weakening macroeconomic environment. Furthermore, since its core end markets in customer relationship management (“CRM”) and Service are fairly mature, a lower growth level versus our expectations could persist for some time.”
A team of software developers gathered around a monitor discussing a new CRM platform.
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is in 8th position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 117 hedge fund portfolios held Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) at the end of the second quarter which was 154 in the previous quarter. In the fiscal second quarter, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) delivered $9.33 billion in revenue, an increase of 8% year over year. While we acknowledge the potential of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) 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 Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) and shared the list of trending AI news that should not be ignored. In Q2 2024, Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) detracted from the performance of Polen Focus Growth Strategy due to slowdown in revenue and bookings growth. 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.