Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its second-quarter 2026 investor letter for its “Artisan Small Cap Fund”. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund reported strong absolute returns and modestly outperformed the Russell 2000® Growth Index, which gained 25.7%. Global equities rebounded as resilient US growth, moderating inflation, strong earnings and continued AI investment outweighed delayed rate cuts, rising bond yields and geopolitical uncertainty. Investor Class: ARTSX, Advisor Class: APDSX, and Institutional Class: APHSX returned 26.02%, 26.05%, and 26.11%, respectively, in the second quarter, compared to a 25.71% return for the index. Market leadership favored loss-making, highly leveraged companies, creating a difficult environment for quality-focused active managers. Health care was the strongest relative contributor, while energy, materials, financials and real estate also helped. Technology, industrials and consumer discretionary detracted, partly because the fund did not own oversized index contributors. Software holdings also weakened despite strong fundamentals. The fund remains positive on small-cap opportunities, AI infrastructure and health care, but has reduced software exposure and is staying selective as valuations rise and competitive risks increase. In addition, please check the Fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2026.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Artisan Small Cap Fund highlighted SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) as a newly added position. SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) engages in the design, development, and sale of silicon timing systems solutions. On July 24, 2026, SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) closed at $554.46 per share. One-month return of SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) was -21.96% and its shares gained 184.69% over the past 52 weeks. SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) has a market capitalization of $14.64 billion with a 52-week trading range between $186.49 – $901.81.
Artisan Small Cap Fund stated the following regarding SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) in its Q2 2026 investor letter:
“SiTime Corporation (NASDAQ:SITM) develops silicon-based timing solutions used across communications, data center and industrial applications. We believe the company is well positioned to benefit from the ongoing transition from legacy quartz timing solutions to higher performance microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) timing devices, with AI infrastructure supporting sustained growth. Recent results significantly exceeded expectations, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure and higher timing content per system, which fueled strong revenue growth and margin expansion. We continue to see multiple catalysts, including higher speed networking, expanding inference workloads and increasing product content. We added to the position during the quarter as our research strengthened our conviction that timing orchestration will become increasingly important in optimizing AI data center performance, while semiconductor-based timing solutions continue to replace legacy quartz technology.”
