Should You Consider Selling S&P Global (SPGI)?

Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Global Discovery Fund” first quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund’s Investor Class APFDX returned 8.40%, Advisor Class APDDX posted a return of 8.37%, and Institutional Class APHDX returned 8.48%, compared to an 8.20% return for the MSCI All Country World Index. Broad-based security selection contributions across health care, consumer staples, industrials, and consumer discretionary drove the fund's outperformance in the quarter. This was partially offset by information technology. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.

Artisan Global Discovery Fund highlighted stocks like S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) in the first quarter 2024 investor letter. S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) offers credit ratings, benchmarks, analytics, and workflow solutions in the global capital, commodity, and automotive markets. S&P Global Inc.'s (NYSE:SPGI) one-month return was 3.15%, and its shares gained 12.62% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On July 2, 2024, S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) stock closed at $450.45 per share with a market capitalization of $140.819 billion.

Artisan Global Discovery Fund stated the following regarding S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) in its Q1 2024 investor letter:

"We ended our investment campaigns in BJ’s Wholesale Club, Moncler and S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) during the quarter. We assumed shares of S&P Global when it merged with IHS Markit. S&P Global is one of the largest credit rating agencies globally and a provider of benchmarks, data and analytics for the global capital and commodities markets. The company has gone through a free cash flow expansion period due to cost-cutting exercises driven by the merger. However, we believe that opportunity is maturing. Furthermore, recent earnings results displayed disappointing forward guidance, including lower rating revenue growth. Given the slowdown in the profit cycle, we decided to exit our position."

A group of analysts studying data on a large monitor.

S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) is in 25th position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 97 hedge fund portfolios held S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) at the end of the first quarter which was 82 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) 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 S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI) in another article and shared Parnassus Value Equity Fund's views on the company. 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.