Is Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

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Artisan Partners, a high value-added investment management firm, published its ‘Artisan Mid Cap Fund’ first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of -2.36% was recorded by its Investor Class: ARTMX, -2.32% by its Advisor Class: APDMX, and -2.30% by its Institutional Class: APHMX, in the fourth quarter of 2020, all below the Russell Midcap® Growth Index that delivered a -0.57% return and the Russell Midcap® Index that was up by 8.14% for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Artisan Mid Cap Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNRC), and shared their insights on the company. Generac Holdings Inc. is a Waukesha, Wisconsin-based manufacturing company that currently has a $19.9 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, GNRC delivered a 39.66% return, extending its 12-month gains to 220.17%. As of May 05, 2021, the stock closed at $319.33 per share.

Here is what Artisan Mid Cap Fund has to say about Generac Holdings Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

"Among our top contributors was Generac. Generac is experiencing robust demand for its industry-leading residential backup generators, a trend we expect to continue. Climate change is causing more frequent and severe storms and power grid failures. More recently, the highly publicized power crisis in Texas could prompt residents of that large state to buy generators to protect against future outages. Meanwhile, the company is making good progress expanding into residential solar backup batteries, which will enhance its overall profit-cycle potential over time. In addition to benefiting from the broader industry trend of grid conversions to more renewable sources, the solar backup battery business should benefit from Generac’s scale, distribution network and differentiated go-to-market strategy."

Manufacture
Manufacture

Our calculations show that Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNRC) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Generac Holdings Inc. was in 32 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 43 funds in the third quarter. GNRC delivered a 21.13% return in the past 3 months.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.

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