🔹 Accenture (ACN US) by Harris Associates U.S. Large Value Strategy
🔹 Applied Materials (AMAT US) by Ironvine Capital Partners
🔹 Birkenstock Holding (BIRK US) by Harris Associates International Small Cap Strategy
🔹 Broadcom Inc. (AVGO US) by Baron Opportunity Fund
🔹 Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR US) by SouthernSun AM SMID Cap Composite
🔹 Builders FirstSource (BLDR US) by Black Bear Value Fund, LP
🔹 Bureau Veritas (BVI FP) by Harris Associates International Strategy
🔹 Centene (CNC US) by Harris Associates U.S. Concentrated Strategy
🔹 Cerebras Systems Inc. by Baron Opportunity Fund
🔹 Cintas (CTAS US) by Aoris International Fund
🔹 Compass Group (CPG LN) by Harris Associates Global Strategy
🔹 Corning (GLW US) by Artisan Partners Global Opportunities Strategy
🔹 CubeSmart (CUBE US) by Baron Real Estate Income Fund
🔹 Data Patterns (India) Limited (DATAPATTNS IN? N/A) by Baron India Fund
🔹 Dormakaba (DOKA SE) by Harris Associates International Small Cap Strategy
🔹 Eckert & Ziegler (EUZ GR) by ACATIS
🔹 eDreams ODIGEO (EDR FP) by Hood River CM International Opportunity Fund
🔹 Entravision Communications (EVC US) by Kingdom Capital Advisors KCA Value Composite
🔹 Guidewire Software, Inc. (GWRE US) by Baron Generational Growth Fund
🔹 i3 Verticals (IIIV US) by Heartland Advisors Small Cap Value Strategy
🔹 Insmed Incorporated (INSM US) by Baron Health Care Fund
🔹 Insulet Corporation (PODD US) by Alpha Wealth Fund The Insiders Fund
🔹 KLA (KLAC US) by Guinness Global Innovators Fund
🔹 Linde plc (LIN US) by Edgewood Large Cap Growth Composite
🔹 Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR US) by Guinness Global Quality Mid Cap Fund
🔹 Nasdaq (NDAQ US) by Guinness Global Innovators Fund
🔹 NextEra Energy (NEE US) by Guinness Sustainable Energy Fund
🔹 Nintendo Co., Ltd. (7974 JP) by Ave Maria Funds
🔹 Pantheon International (PIN LN) by AVI MIGO Opportunities Trust
🔹 Ryanair Holdings plc (RYA ID) by Artisan Partners Non-U.S. Growth Strategy
🔹 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930 KS) by Artisan Partners Global Equity Fund
🔹 SATS Ltd. (S58 SP) by Harris Associates International Small Cap Strategy
🔹 Silicon Motion Technology Corporation (SIMO US) by Focus Capital Management Fund
🔹 Sotera Health (SHC US) by O’Keefe Stevens Advisory
🔹 Sphere Entertainment (SPHR US) by O’Keefe Stevens Advisory
🔹 Techtronic Industries (669 HK) by Aristotle International Equity ADR WM
🔹 Terreno Realty Corporation (TRNO US) by Baron Real Estate Income Fund
🔹 Tesla, Inc. (TSLA US) by Edgewood Large Cap Growth Composite
🔹 Tokyo Electron Limited (8035 JP) by Baron International Growth Fund
🔹 Wolters Kluwer N.V. (WKL NA) by Brown Advisory International Value Select Strategy
Fund: Harris Associates U.S. Large Value Strategy
Thesis: Accenture is seen as temporarily pressured but well positioned to benefit from AI-driven transformation, with deep client relationships and a low valuation.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Accenture was a detractor during the quarter. Shares of the U.S.-listed IT services company fell sharply after fiscal third-quarter results showed weaker than expected bookings and a modestly below consensus near-term revenue outlook. The market is treating these results as proof that AI is disrupting Accenture’s business model. We believe the weakness is due to transitory rather than structural factors. As enterprises begin to execute larger-scale transformation projects tied to AI, we expect Accenture’s revenue growth to accelerate. Accenture is deeply embedded in enterprise IT roadmaps, as 195 of its top 200 clients have worked with the firm for over a decade and most of those clients spend more than $100M annually. Shares now trade for less than 10x free cash flow and at the lowest P/E multiple in Accenture’s 25-year history as a public company. We see the shares as significantly undervalued at the current price.
Access our full research database on Accenture
Fund: Ironvine Capital Partners
Thesis: Applied Materials is tied to structurally attractive semiconductor spending, but higher valuations now require sustained 2027–2028 capex levels.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
When we first underwrote Applied Materials in the spring of 2024, consensus called for $1 trillion in industry-wide semiconductor revenue by 2030. As hyperscaler capex totals began their ascent last year, many projected sales approaching or eclipsing $1 trillion in 2026. From today’s vantage point, $1.7 trillion(!) in semiconductor revenue is not beyond the realm of possibility this year thanks in part to the surging price of memory chips. Against such explosive growth in the supply of compute, the demand curve has been equally shocking. As the most potent example, annualized run rate revenue at leading AI research lab Anthropic has grown from ~$1 billion exiting 2024, to ~$10 billion exiting 2025, to $47 billion by May of this year and is rumored to currently be approaching $70 billion—a run rate that took Microsoft over 30 years to reach. While this is the kind of problem every industry should hope to face, the demand inflection has awakened a voracious appetite for public market beneficiaries. The result is stock prices that appear to reflect the expectation of several years of (rapidly) rising capital investment. Our semiconductor-related businesses remain as structurally attractive as they did twelve months ago, but their stock prices increasingly require 2027 or 2028 spending levels to serve as a new and sustainable baseline. We see no evidence to suggest that won’t be the case, but that prospect has shifted from one of low-cost optionality when making our initial investments, to a requirement for driving attractive returns going forward. And importantly, as hyperscaler FCF goes negative, that requirement is increasingly dependent on the risk appetite of external capital providers. As a result, we’ve been lowering our collective exposure in recent weeks. Specifically, we sold portions of our Applied Materials, Analog Devices, and Amphenol investments across Ironvine strategies during the second quarter.
Access our full research database on Applied Materials
Fund: Harris Associates International Small Cap Strategy
Thesis: Birkenstock is a premium footwear brand with structural barriers, vertical integration, and durable growth and margin potential.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Birkenstock Holding is a Germany-headquartered premium footwear company that designs, manufactures, and distributes sandals and closed-toe footwear globally, anchored by a proprietary cork-and-latex footbed with documented orthopedic function. The premium footwear segment benefits from an oligopolistic structure in comfort-focused categories, where brand heritage, proprietary materials, and sustained supply discipline create meaningful barriers to replication. We believe Birkenstock’s fully vertically integrated manufacturing model and consistent full-price sell-through distinguish it from conventional footwear peers and support more durable growth and margins than the current share price implies. The stock has de-rated due to a combination of tariff exposure, dollar weakness, and market skepticism about the durability of recent product momentum — concerns we view as transitory or overstated — leaving shares trading at a meaningful discount to our estimate of intrinsic value.
Access our full research database on Birkenstock Holding
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Fund: Baron Opportunity Fund
Thesis: Broadcom Inc. is positioned to benefit from AI-related custom silicon demand, anchored by deep customer relationships and a leading market position.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Broadcom Inc. is a global designer and supplier of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions at the core of modern computing and networking. The company is a leader in high-performance digital and mixed-signal technologies spanning networking, connectivity, storage, and custom silicon accelerators. Through its acquisition of VMware, Broadcom also owns critical software layers used to virtualize and manage large-scale compute environments. Shares contributed to performance during the quarter as the company’s key customer, Alphabet (Google), signaled higher and more durable capital expenditures over the coming years than previously anticipated. Broadcom’s multi-year agreement with Google, extending through 2031, validates its entrenched position within the Google silicon ecosystem and establishes it as a primary beneficiary of Google’s AI-related infrastructure spending. Beyond Google, several other customers showed incrementally positive signs in their custom silicon adoption journeys. Anthropic, following its recent commercial success, is planning for significantly larger compute requirements, which should translate into a growing custom silicon base over the next several years. OpenAI, working with Broadcom, taped out its first inference chip—codenamed Jalapeno—in a record nine months, and appears set to build 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure using custom silicon this decade. Meta continues to hold a constructive view on AI investment and the associated infrastructure buildout. Additionally, Apple signed a multi-year agreement with Broadcom spanning multiple product lines—encompassing not only conventional radio frequency components and next-generation wireless connectivity technologies, but also custom silicon across multiple generations of Apple products. As CEO Hock Tan has noted, custom silicon accelerators are on pace to match GPU units in volume by next year, and Broadcom, as the category leader, is well positioned to be the primary beneficiary of this transition. We maintain our conviction in Broadcom. The company is uniquely positioned to capture a dominant share of the custom silicon market and faces no credible terminal risk to its custom silicon franchise over the foreseeable future. We continue to hold the stock and believe Broadcom is on a path to becoming one of the largest technology companies in the world.
Access our full research database on Broadcom Inc.
Fund: SouthernSun AM SMID Cap Composite
Thesis: Broadridge Financial Solutions has durable proxy and trading franchises, strong growth, and an attractive valuation despite AI and tokenization fears.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR), the leading processor of proxy voting and fixed-income trading in the U.S., was a bottom contributor in the SMID Cap strategy during the second quarter despite 7% recurring revenue growth, 11% Adjusted EPS growth, and increases to full-year guidance for both recurring revenue and Adjusted EPS. Shares appear to have fallen on two longer-dated fears: that AI will erode BR’s technology franchises and that tokenized equities will disintermediate its governance business. These pressures were amplified by a cut to closed-sales guidance, which we attribute to sales-cycle timing rather than demand destruction. In our view, both fears are overstated. Regarding AI, we believe it is highly unlikely that BR clients will in-source proxy processing. First, the risk/reward is sharply asymmetric: we believe the compliance and liability consequences of a failed proxy distribution far outweigh any marginal cost savings. Second, any broker-dealer attempting to turn proxy distribution into a profit center would likely invite a review of the very fee schedule that creates the opportunity. Finally, even a client determined to migrate would have to do so over years, not quarters (BR’s multi-year contracts make any transition gradual). On tokenization, the SEC has affirmed that tokenized securities carry the same governance and compliance obligations as traditional equities, and the vast majority of tokenized equities will, in our view, continue to flow through broker-dealers and digital platforms that are already BR’s core clients. With a conservatively leveraged balance sheet (~1.7x Net Debt/EBITDA), double-digit EPS growth guidance, and a proven management team, BR trades at just 15x fiscal 2026 Adjusted EPS, a combination we find compelling.
Access our full research database on Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.
Fund: Black Bear Value Fund, LP
Thesis: Builders FirstSource is a building materials supplier for residential construction with improved margins, stronger capital returns, and attractive long-term cash flow potential from a structurally underbuilt U.S. housing market.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Builders FirstSource (BLDR) BLDR appreciated approximately 9% during the second quarter but remains down roughly 13% year-to-date amid continued weakness in the housing market. New home demand has softened as affordability challenges continue to weigh on buyers. We expect 2026 free cash flow to be approximately $500–800 million, representing a 5–9% free-cash-flow yield. While housing activity remains near cyclical lows, we believe BLDR should be able to sustain this level of cash generation. As a reminder, BLDR is a manufacturer and supplier of building materials focused primarily on residential construction. Historically, the business was highly cyclical, with limited pricing power because much of its revenue came from commodity products such as lumber. Since the Global Financial Crisis, however, the company has transformed its business, growing its higher-value-added operations to more than 40% of revenue. That shift has improved margins, increased returns on capital, and made the business meaningfully more resilient across the housing cycle.
Housing affordability is unlikely to improve materially in the near term absent a significant decline in mortgage rates, which we do not expect. That said, we believe the underlying fundamentals continue to improve. As new housing supply remains constrained, rental rates should continue to rise, making homeownership relatively more attractive. At the same time, as higher mortgage rates become more normalized and wages continue to increase, both actual affordability and consumers’ willingness to finance homes at today’s rates should gradually improve. Our long-term investment thesis remains unchanged. The United States continues to face a structural housing shortage, and higher mortgage rates have further constrained the supply of existing homes by locking homeowners into low-rate mortgages. As a result, even if overall housing activity remains subdued, we believe new homebuilders are likely to continue gaining market share, an important benefit for BLDR given its significant exposure to new residential construction. We have reduced our near-term cash flow estimates to reflect a slower housing recovery. Even so, we continue to estimate normalized free cash flow of approximately $9–12 per share, implying a normalized free-cash-flow yield of roughly 10–13% before assigning any value to future growth. Combined with favorable long-term industry dynamics and BLDR’s increasingly advantaged competitive position, we continue to believe the shares offer an attractive risk-reward.
Access our full research database on Builders FirstSource
Fund: Harris Associates International Strategy
Thesis: Bureau Veritas has durable growth and resilient margins from its oligopolistic TIC model, with upside from portfolio reshaping and a discounted valuation.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Bureau Veritas is a France-headquartered test- ing, inspection, and certification (TIC) company operating in ~140 countries, providing inde- pendent verification that products and systems meet regulatory and contractual standards. The TIC industry’s oligopolistic structure, accred- itation-based barriers to entry, and mission-criti- cal-but-low-cost services support durable or- ganic growth and resilient through-cycle mar- gins. We view Bureau Veritas as better posi- tioned than perceived, with a portfolio reshap- ing toward higher-growth end markets — data center commissioning, fleet decarbonization, and infrastructure — and management execut- ing an operational improvement program that has already delivered margin gains ahead of plan. A Q1 miss driven by transitory Government Services and Middle East headwinds has pushed the stock to near decade-low multiples, creating an opportunity to invest at a meaning- ful discount to our estimate of intrinsic value.
Access our full research database on Bureau Veritas
Fund: Harris Associates U.S. Concentrated Strategy
Thesis: Centene is a government managed care leader with expected earnings recovery from stabilizing medical costs, better reimbursement, and expense initiatives.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Centene was a contributor during the quarter. Shares of the U.S.-headquartered managed care company rallied sharply after it reported better than expected first-quarter results. Managed care industry profitability has been under pressure over the last 2 years amidst an unprecedented spike in medical cost trend. However, there are signs that cost trend is now stabilizing or even decelerating in certain utilization categories. We expect easing medical costs combined with improving reimbursement rates and Centene’s own expense initiatives to drive a meaningful earnings recovery in the coming years. Beyond this cyclical recovery, we believe Centene remains well positioned for growth as a leader in government managed care.
Access our full research database on Centene
Fund: Baron Opportunity Fund
Thesis: Cerebras Systems Inc. targets fast AI inference with differentiated hardware, major customer commitments, and category leadership.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
During the quarter, we participated in the IPO of Cerebras Systems Inc. , a semiconductor design and compute services company building AI accelerators around one of the most differentiated architectures in the market. We developed a strong familiarity with the Cerebras management team during its final two years as a private company, including multiple meetings and a visit to its headquarters just months before the offering. As AI inference has become the dominant and fastest-growing component of AI compute demand, a critical sub-segment has emerged: fast inference, or the speed at which an AI model generates responses, measured in tokens per second. As developers build applications and agents that chain multiple models together, demand for tokens per second is growing by orders of magnitude—and Cerebras has designed a specialized chip exceptionally well suited to serve this need. Unlike most semiconductor startups, Cerebras holds a genuine performance advantage for fast inference workloads, and customer engagements speak louder than benchmarks: a multi-year agreement with OpenAI for 750 megawatts of inference capacity valued at more than $20 billion—with an option to add another 1.25 gigawatts—reflects real confidence in both the fast inference market and Cerebras’ differentiated value proposition, and a new partnership to bring fast inference to Amazon Web Services further validates the opportunity. The company is currently pursuing both direct AI systems sales and cloud services to drive adoption. We expect the AI infrastructure buildout to sustain its momentum, with a large and growing share of workloads requiring fast inference, and as the category leader, Cerebras is well positioned to benefit while continuing to innovate to hold its lead. We are clear-eyed about the risks—the company must execute on the OpenAI deployments, develop architectural solutions as workloads evolve and potentially demand significantly more memory, and depend on customers continuing to pay a premium for faster inference—but on balance, we find the setup compelling and initiated a position during the quarter.
Access our full research database on Cerebras Systems Inc.
Fund: Aoris International Fund
Thesis: Cintas is a broad uniform and facility-services leader with technology-enabled efficiency gains and a large remaining market to penetrate.
Source: Read the original letter ↗
Analysis:
Cintas is America’s largest uniform rental company. It earns 40% of its revenue from collecting, laundering and replacing uniforms for customers in industries such as hospitality, entertainment, manufacturing and healthcare. It also offers other facility services like the laundering of entrance mats, replenishment of restroom supplies, and monitoring of first aid kits and fire protection equipment. Cintas has long used technology to improve service and efficiency, such as the SmartTruck system, which optimises its technicians’ workday routes, and garment-tracking technology to reduce the likelihood of lost uniforms. AI should be another tool for Cintas to improve its logistics, service quality, sales effectiveness and cost control. Cintas is a broad business, with no single industry representing more than 10% of its revenue, and much of its customer base are blue-collar workers, who are less susceptible to AI disruption. In addition, 60% of its revenue comes from services that serve facilities rather than individual employees. Cintas also has a large market to grow into regardless of employment trends. Today it only serves 1 million of the 20 million businesses in North America. These businesses are likely to continue outsourcing uniform rental and facility services to third parties like Cintas, and it could be doing more for each of its customers.
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