Columbia Acorn Fund, distributed by Columbia Management Investment Distributors, released its second quarter 2024 investor letter. A copy of the fund can be downloaded here. In the quarter, the fund returned -6.01%, while the benchmark, the Russell 2500 Growth Index, returned -4.22%. The second quarter brought a significant change in market sentiment. The underperformance of the holdings in the quarter was primarily driven by a disappointing earnings season. In addition, you can check the fund's top 5 holdings for its best picks for 2024.

Columbia Acorn Fund highlighted stocks like Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) in the second quarter 2024 investor letter. Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) develops and distributes bioprocessing technologies and systems. The one-month return of Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) was -8.48%, and its shares lost 7.72% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 10, 2024, Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) stock closed at $146.70 per share with a market capitalization of $8.216 billion.

Columbia Acorn Fund stated the following regarding Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

"Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) is a supplier of innovative solutions to the bioprocessing market, one of the fastest growing areas of health care. Near-term growth and stock price performance has been impacted by a mix of headwinds, including difficult COVID comparisons, destocking and broader pharmaceutical customer caution due to macro concerns, along with a somewhat surprising CEO transition. We believe fears around the management transition are overblown and that the market is overstating the transitory issues facing the company. We anticipate that Repligen’s fundamentals and stock valuation will quickly reflect any signs of an industry recovery, and the stock remains a large position in the fund."

A technician in a lab inspecting an ELISA test kit for use in biopharmaceutical diagnostics.

Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) is not on our list of 31 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds.  As per our database, 37 hedge fund portfolios held Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) at the end of the second quarter which was 32 in the previous quarter. Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) reported $154 million in revenues in the second quarter, a decline of 3% year-over-year. While we acknowledge the potential of Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) 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.