Polen Capital, an investment management firm, released its Q4 2025 investor letter on “Polen Global Growth Strategy.” A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fourth quarter of 2025 seemed to be the full year. The stock market experienced a severe 5% sell-off in the fourth quarter, but quickly recovered to all-time highs, mirroring the V-shaped recovery from April lows. In this environment, the Fund’s high-quality portfolio faced relative performance difficulties. The portfolio’s software holdings lagged gains in the broader market despite revenue and profit growth. The Portfolio returned -2.5% gross of fees (-2.7% net of fees) in the fourth quarter of 2025, lagging the 3.3% gain of the MSCI All Country World Index (the “Index”). Review the strategy’s top five holdings to learn about its key picks for 2025.
In its Q4 2025 investor letter, Polen Global Growth Strategy highlighted stocks like Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT). Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) is a leading provider of audio streaming subscription services that monetizes through paid premium subscriptions and an advertising-supported model. On March 9, 2026, Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) stock closed at $544.88 per share. Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT)’s monthly performance was 14.47% and its shares gained 7.17% in the last twelve months. Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) has a market capitalization of $112.188 million.
Polen Global Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) in its Q4 2025 investor letter:
“We also initiated a position in Spotify which, in our opinion, continues to perform at a high level. Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) is a large-scale two-way network enjoying secular growth as streaming and the proliferation of smartphones are now a global norm. We believe music is the least monetized form of digital entertainment, and as the world’s largest streaming network, Spotify serves more than 600 million active users, the majority of whom use the service with ad-supported content. A large and growing paying user base of over 250 million regularly consumes content from the platform. As an entertainment destination in most users’ pockets, we see continued growth in engagement going forward. Progress in onboarding new users, converting ad-supported listeners to paid subscribers, and driving greater engagement with new offerings such as podcasts, audiobooks, and videos are enabling earnings and free cash flow growth. We believe these drivers can deliver more than 20% annual free cash flow growth over the next five years.”
