Parnassus Investments, an investment management company, released the “Parnassus Value Equity Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, the Fund (Investor Shares) returned 7.28% (net of fees) underperforming the Russell 1000 Value Index’s 9.43% return. The Information Technology sector was the largest detractor, due to both stock selection and an overweight position. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2024.
Parnassus Value Equity Fund highlighted stocks like UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) is a diversified healthcare company that operates through UnitedHealthcare, Optum Health, Optum Insight, and Optum Rx segments. The one-month return of UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) was -16.99%, and its shares lost 3.38% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 16, 2024, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) stock closed at $498.50 per share with a market capitalization of $458.762 billion.
Parnassus Value Equity Fund stated the following regarding UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:
“We purchased two new stocks, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) and Amazon. These are high-quality businesses facing temporary issues, which allowed us to purchase them at discounted valuations. The addition of UnitedHealth increases our small overweight to the Health Care sector. UnitedHealth benefits from secular tailwinds of an aging population, health care cost inflation and increasingly relevant use of heath care data/analytics. It also commands industry leadership when it comes to its extensive assets, vertical integration and deep management bench. Even though the stock has underperformed in the past year, we believe many of those factors have been priced in, positioning it well for growth in the near term.”
A senior healthcare professional giving advice to a patient in a clinic.
UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) is in 22nd position on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 112 hedge fund portfolios held UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) at the end of the third quarter which was 114 in the previous quarter. UnitedHealth Group Incorporated’s (NYSE:UNH) Q3 revenues reached $101 billion, marking a 9% year-over-year increase with strong growth at both Optum and UnitedHealthcare segments. While we acknowledge the potential of UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) 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.
