Sands Capital Management, LLC released its Q1 2026 investor letter for its “Select Growth Strategy.” A copy of the letter is available to download here. Select Growth primarily targets leading US companies, driving positive structural changes. US large-cap growth stocks fell in the first quarter. The quarter was characterized by sharp dispersion driven by AI advances, but at the end of the quarter, geopolitical tensions with Iran caused widespread risk aversion across the market. AI continued to influence market behavior: AI-related investments increased dispersion and shifted capital to asset-heavy sectors benefiting from demand for AI infrastructure, which faced less risk of disruption. While stocks struggled, corporate fundamentals remained strong. Select Growth underperformed the Russell 1000 Growth index, returning -12.9% versus -9.8%, due to concerns about AI disruption impacting sector and stock options. The Strategy’s focus on higher-growth, asset-light services businesses faced challenges as markets pivoted toward more capital-intensive and lower-risk sectors. Underweights in the cyclical and defensive sectors slightly detracted from relative performance amid the broader market turnaround. Plus, check out the strategy’s top five holdings for your best picks in 2026.
In its Q1 2026 investor letter, Sands Capital Select Growth Strategy highlighted Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) as a newly added position. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) is a leading semiconductor equipment company that supplies semiconductor processing equipment for integrated circuit manufacturing. On June 8, 2026, Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) closed at $324.45 per share. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX)’s monthly performance was 12.17% and its shares gained 256.54% in the last 52 weeks. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) has a market capitalization of $405.75 billion.
Sands Capital Select Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) is a leading global supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Our research indicates that Lam is the market share leader in numerous cutting-edge etch applications, where transistor structures are etched onto silicon wafers, with a primary exposure to memory and a secondary focus on logic chips. Semiconductor manufacturing is becoming more complex as more functions are packed into a fixed physical space, increasing capital intensity and raising the cost of producing advanced chips. In our view, Lam plays a critical role in enabling future computing performance. Traditional drivers of computing improvements, such as frequency scaling and energy efficiency, have slowed, shifting innovation toward new architectures that include three-dimensional structures, parallel processing, and task-specific accelerators. These advances require increasingly sophisticated manufacturing processes, where Lam’s capabilities play an essential role. “We believe Lam is well positioned to benefit from a multi-year investment cycle as the industry transitions to more advanced nodes and memory demand increases to support the growth of AI applications.”
