Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund increased 3.6% (Institutional Shares) in the third quarter compared to a 3.2% gain for the Russell 1000 Growth Index and a 5.9% increase for the S&P 500 Index. Year to date, the fund returned 23.3% compared to 24.6% and 22.1% gains for the indexes. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund highlighted stocks like CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a global cyber security solutions provider. The one-month return of CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) was 15.76%, and its shares gained 45.74% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On November 29, 2024, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) stock closed at $345.97 per share with a market capitalization of $85.615 billion.
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leading cybersecurity software company. Following a long period of outsized gains, shares fell 29.5% in the quarter after a software glitch caused a global Microsoft outage in July. Despite the outage, the company delivered solid second quarter results that exceeded the high end of expectations across all key metrics. Management called out several delayed deals but noted that they remained in the pipeline and should close in coming quarters. Increased scrutiny and the implementation of new incentives, including discounts and free products and flexibility on billings, will likely negatively impact bookings and revenue growth over the near term. While the range of outcomes on the implications of the outage on customer retention and willingness to expand with CrowdStrike remains wider than usual, leading us to reduce our position, we believe that the fact that the incident was not due to a breach, the company’s competitively advantaged product, its transparent and rapid response, and the new procedures it had put in place, should help it retain its customers and grow wallet share over time.”
Security personnel at their consoles, monitoring a global network of threats in real-time.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 74 hedge fund portfolios held CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) at the end of the third quarter which was 69 in the previous quarter. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:CRWD) subscription revenue grew 31% year-over-year in the third quarter and total revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time in company history. While we acknowledge the potential of CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) 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 CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) and shared the list of AI stocks taking Wall Street by storm. 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.