ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Multi Cap Growth Strategy” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the quarter, the Strategy underperformed its benchmark, the Russell 3000 Growth Index. The Strategy posted gains across five of the seven sectors in which it was invested, on an absolute basis. Overall stock selection detracted from the performance on a relative basis. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
ClearBridge Multi Cap Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW), in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) distributes maintenance, repair, and operating products and services. The one-month return of W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) was -3.09%, and its shares gained 18.12% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On June 25, 2024, W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) stock closed at $910.08 per share with a market capitalization of $44.715 billion.
ClearBridge Multi Cap Growth Strategy Mid Company Fund stated the following regarding W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:
“W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW), in the industrials sector, was our largest new buy. Grainger is the biggest industrial maintenance, repair, and operations distributor in North America. The company is a share gainer in a large and fragmented market, with less than 10% share of the addressable market for their direct, “high touch solutions” business estimated at more than $165 billion. Grainger has also barely scratched the surface with its online “endless assortment” platform, Zoro.com, which targets an even larger market. In addition to its growth and profit potential, we are attracted to Grainger’s strong balance sheet and improved capital allocation under its current management.”
A portrait of an industrial worker wearing safety equipment, smiling while inspecting a piece of equipment.
W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 36 hedge fund portfolios held W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) at the end of the first quarter which was 35 in the previous quarter. W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) saw a 4.9% growth in daily organic constant currency basis during the first quarter (see the details here). While we acknowledge the potential of W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) 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.
We discussed W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW) in another article and shared the list of stocks with latest dividend increases. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 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.
