Soumya Eswaran
4 min read
In This Article:
Baron Funds, an investment management company, released its “Baron Discovery Fund” first quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund was down 6.17% (Institutional Shares), outperforming the -11.12% return for the Russell 2000 Growth Index. The market began strong in February but faded due to Trump's serious tariff enactment, which the market perceives as inflationary and slowing economic growth. The decline accelerated after April 2nd, causing fears of a trade war and global recession. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its first-quarter 2025 investor letter, Baron Discovery Fund highlighted stocks such as Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN). Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN) engages in designing, testing, manufacturing, and sale of mission-critical systems for missile and defense, space programs, hypersonic, and launch vehicle markets. The one-month return of Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN) was -31.05%, and its shares gained 40.56% of their value in the last three months. On May 19, 2025, Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN) stock closed at $44.32 per share with a market capitalization of $5.858 billion.
Baron Discovery Fund stated the following regarding Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
"Karman Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KRMN) is a leading proprietary space and defense solutions provider. We initiated a position in February 2025 when the company executed its IPO. Formed via four key acquisitions by Dallas-based private equity firm, Thrive Capital, in the early 2020s, Karman has a management team with a strong mix of executive experience and technical, engineering talent.
