RiverPark Advisors, an investment advisory firm and sponsor of the RiverPark family of mutual funds, released its “RiverPark Large Growth Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. During the third quarter, the markets performed strongly with the Russell 1000 Growth Index (RLG) and the S&P 500 index returning 3.19% and 5.89% respectively and RPX returning 3.73%. A weaker-than-expected jobs report that raised fears of a coming recession caused the RLG to drop 8.8% from the end of June to the fifth of August, giving the quarter a rocky start. As China passed a significant stimulus package and the Fed began its rate-cutting cycle with a 0.50% decrease to a goal of 4.75%-5.00%, those losses quickly reversed. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
RiverPark Large Growth Fund highlighted stocks like Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) in its Q3 2024 investor letter. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) provides a cloud-based commerce platform and services. The one-month return of Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) was 14.96%, and its shares gained 58.43% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 17, 2024, Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) stock closed at $119.49 per share with a market capitalization of $154.71 billion.
RiverPark Large Growth Fund stated the following regarding Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP): Shopify was a top contributor in the third quarter following a strong second quarter earnings report that included better than expected revenue growth and substantial margin expansion. Gross merchandise value (the value of all items sold on the platform) growth of 22% was three percentage points above investor estimates, revenue of $2.0 billion was $50 million better and free cash flow of $333 million was $80 million better. A combination of new merchants to the company’s platform, increased adoption of SHOP’s offerings by existing merchants, and e-commerce market share gains are driving this revenue growth and profitability.
Last year, 10% of US retail e-commerce sales flowed through SHOP, second only to Amazon, and the company is still enjoying significant tailwinds as retail merchants of all sizes adopt SHOP’s software tools to display, manage and sell their products across a dozen different sales channels. We believe that the overall growth of e-commerce, combined with the development of new products and services, such as its digital wallet Shop Pay, should continue to drive revenue growth of more than 20% per year over the next several years, accompanied by re-acceleration of operating margin growth and FCF generation.”
Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 56 hedge fund portfolios held Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) at the end of the third quarter which was 56 in the previous quarter. Shopify Inc.’s (NYSE:SHOP) third quarter revenue was $2.2 billion, up 26% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) 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 Shopify Inc. (NYSE:SHOP) and shared the list of top stock picks for 2024 from the ARK invest stock portfolio. 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.