Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Small Cap Fund” fourth quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. US stocks concluded a strong year with strong gains in Q4. In Q4, the portfolio's performance was flat and narrowly trailed the Russell 2000® Growth Index. In 2024, the portfolio produced a robust absolute return that was in line with the Russell 2000® Growth Index but outperformed the Russell 2000 Index. In the quarter, its Investor Class fund ARTSX returned 0.61%, Advisor Class fund APDSX posted a return of 0.66%, and Institutional Class fund APHSX returned 0.67%, compared to a return of 1.70% for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to find out its best picks for 2024.

In its fourth quarter 2024 investor letter, Artisan Small Cap Fund emphasized stocks such as Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN). Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) offers integrated solutions and services in the defense, intelligence, and critical infrastructure markets. The one-month return of Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) was -24.95%, and its shares lost 27.15% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On March 10, 2025, Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) stock closed at $58.52 per share with a market capitalization of $6.249 billion.

Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

"Notable adds in the quarter included John Bean Technologies, Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) and Gitlab. Parsons Corporation is a leading disruptive technology provider in the national security and global infrastructure markets, with capabilities across cyber and intelligence, space and missile defense, transportation, environmental remediation, urban development and critical infrastructure protection. We believe the company is well positioned to benefit from several secular growth drivers, including growing defense spending, an acceleration in North American infrastructure spending, growing Middle Eastern infrastructure spending as the region’s countries diversify their economies from oil to entertainment and tourism, and growing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances remediation spending. Shares declined as the proposed Department of Government Efficiency caused greater uncertainty in the defense and infrastructure markets. However, within both end markets, we have high confidence that its programs are aligned with required spending rather than areas that could be targeted for efficiency savings. Therefore, we added to the position."

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Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 41 hedge fund portfolios held Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) at the end of the fourth quarter compared to 30 in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) reported $1.7 billion in revenues, representing an increase of 16% from Q4 2023. While we acknowledge the potential of Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) 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.

In another article, we discussed Parsons Corporation (NYSE:PSN) and shared the list of worst performing IT services stocks to buy according to analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.