Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The third quarter saw strength in small cap stocks, particularly in July when the return on the Russell 2000 Index was 10.2%. In the quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned 9.02%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of 9.04%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned 9.06%, compared to a return of 8.41% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. Outperformance of the fund in the quarter was driven by positive security selection within health care and consumer discretionary sectors. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2024.
Artisan Small Cap Fund highlighted stocks like SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) is a product design and technology company that provides cleaning, cooking, beverage, food preparation, and beauty appliances. The one-month return of SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) was 0.33, and its shares gained 103.26% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 11, 2024, SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) stock closed at $101.63 per share with a market capitalization of $14.251 billion.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Among our top Q3 contributors were Guidewire, Veracyte and SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN). SharkNinja is a leading household consumer products company. Its Shark brand focuses on the cleaning category (vacuums, mops, carpet cleaners, etc.) and, more recently, beauty (hair dryers, hair stylers, etc.). Its Ninja brand focuses on food preparation (blenders, food processors, ice cream makers, juicers, etc.) and cooking (indoor grills, ovens, toasters, cookers, air fryers, etc.). We believe a healthy combination of market share gains within existing categories, new category entries and international expansion will drive growth. Shares rallied after reporting strong earnings results, including 31% revenue growth and 600bps of gross margin expansion.”
A customer in an offline experience store testing out a new small appliance.
SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 56 hedge fund portfolios held SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) at the end of the third quarter which was 52 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) 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 SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) and shared Ave Maria World Equity Fund’s views on the company. Artisan Small Cap Fund added SharkNinja, Inc. (NYSE:SN) to its portfolio during Q1 2024. 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.