Investment management company Ave Maria recently released its “Ave Maria Value Fund” third quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the third quarter, the fund returned 10.12% compared to 6.94% return for the S&P Mid Cap 400 Index and 5.89% for the S&P 500 Index. You can check the fund’s top 5 holdings for its best picks for 2024.

Ave Maria Value Fund highlighted stocks like The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL), in the third quarter 2024 investor letter. The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) is a consumer-packaged food and beverage company. The one-month return of The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) was 5.00%, and its shares gained 0.55% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 16, 2024, The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) stock closed at $39.90 per share with a market capitalization of $4.031 billion.

Ave Maria Value Fund stated the following regarding The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

"The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) is a fast-growing, small cap, consumer packaged goods company that utilizes an asset-light business model. The company began in 2016 with the acquisition by Conyers Park Acquisition Corp. of the Atkins branded line of nutritional snack products. Since 2016, Simply Good has made two other significant acquisitions both focused on the nutritional snacking space: 1) Quest – a healthy lifestyle food company offering a variety of protein bars, cookies, chips, ready-to-drink shakes and other snacks. Quest was acquired for $1B in August of 2019. 2) OWYN (Only What You Need) - a producer of plant-based, GMO free, gluten free, clean ingredient protein shakes. OWYN was acquired in April 2024 for $280M."

A close up of a hand of a a child holding a freshly opened packet of the company's popular ready-to-drink shake.

The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 26 hedge fund portfolios held The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) at the end of the third quarter which was 23 in the previous quarter. In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2024, The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) reported net sales of $375.7 million, up 17.2% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) 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 The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) and shared the list of cheap food stocks to buy according to analysts. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2024 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and A New Dawn Is Coming to US Stocks.

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