Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Mid Cap Fund” first quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund’s Investor Class fund ARTMX returned -7.40%, Advisor Class fund APDMX posted a return of -7.37%, and Institutional Class fund APHMX returned -7.35%, compared to a -7.12% return for the Russell Midcap Growth Index. US equities achieved solid Q4 gains, concluding a strong year. After a period of strong growth stock performance in 2023 and 2024, value stocks gained the lead in Q1 2025. In a risk-averse environment, investors shifted towards lower-volatility equities, especially in the utilities and consumer staples sectors, alongside those with higher dividend yields. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its first-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Mid Cap Fund highlighted stocks such as Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY). Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) is a specialty retail company that engages in the consumer technology products and services. The one-month return of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) was 10.50%, and its shares lost 9.06% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On May 5, 2025, Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) stock closed at $67.66 per share with a market capitalization of $14.323 billion.
Artisan Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“We ended our investment campaigns in Illumina, Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) and Datadog during the quarter. Best Buy is the largest US consumer electronics retailer, with more than 1,000 stores. Our thesis was driven by the company’s most important segment (computing and mobile) returning to growth, catalyzed by a long-awaited product replacement cycle, especially as consumers upgrade to offerings with embedded AI functionality. While we saw some recent this playing out, escalating tariff policies create meaningful risk to the company’s supply chain. We exited the position.”
A busy retail store showcasing a wide range of consumer electronics.
Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 38 hedge fund portfolios held Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 37 in the third quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) 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.
