Meridian Funds, managed by ArrowMark Partners, released its “Meridian Growth Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. On September 18th, the U.S. Federal Reserve (“Fed”) reduced interest rates by 0.5%, bringing much-needed relief to investors. This crucial action contributed to stabilizing the markets following a volatile August. During the quarter, small-cap stocks outperformed large-cap stocks, achieving gains of 9.3% and 6.1%, respectively, according to the Russell family of indices. In the quarter, the fund returned 6.78% (net) outperforming the benchmark, the Russell 2500 Growth Index’s 6.99% return. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Meridian Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) offers an enterprise platform to plan, capture, manage, automate, and report on work for teams and organizations. The one-month return of Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) was -0.64%, and its shares gained 32.86% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 27, 2024, Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) stock closed at $56.00 per share with a market capitalization of $7.801 billion.
Meridian Growth Fund stated the following regarding Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) provides a comprehensive work-management software solution that enhances project management and workflow organization. Its platform significantly boosts productivity and offers a strong return on investment for customers. With over a billion potential knowledge workers globally, Smartsheet is well-positioned for growth, supported by established relationships with large enterprises that contribute to 95% recurring revenues and high gross margins. We identified these promising dynamics earlier this year when Smartsheet was trading at a significant discount to its peers.
The company attracted the attention of private equity, which made what we believe to be a fair offer to take it private, propelling the stock higher during the quarter. As a result, we trimmed our position during the period.”
An executive in suit presenting a large touch screen of the company’s cloud-based enterprise platform.
Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 61 hedge fund portfolios held Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) at the end of the third quarter which was 57 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) 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 Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) and shared the list of best small company stocks to invest in. 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.