Arista Networks Inc. (ANET): Among Billionaire David Harding's Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

Yahoo

02-05-2025

We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Arista Networks Inc. (NYSE:ANET) stands against other billionaire David Harding's stock picks with huge upside potential.
David Harding is a British hedge fund manager and physicist by training, studied natural sciences at St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge, with a focus on theoretical physics. His education in empirical science would go on to inform his pioneering approach to financial markets. Harding began his career in finance in the mid-1980s, working at Sabre Fund Management. At Sabre, he was instrumental in developing early systematic trading models that used statistical analysis to identify patterns in market behavior. This experience laid the foundation for his future endeavors in quantitative finance.
In 1997, he established (now Winton Group), with the goal of applying scientific research and data-driven techniques to financial markets. Under Harding's leadership, Winton grew rapidly, at one point managing over $28 billion in assets. The firm became one of the most prominent names in the quantitative hedge fund space, known for its commitment to rigorous data analysis and skepticism toward discretionary trading. Winton's strategies typically involve global futures and equities, relying on vast historical datasets and algorithmic models rather than human intuition.
In recent years, Harding's firm has experienced a resurgence. After a significant downturn, Winton rebounded with a 47% return in 2022, marking its best performance since the financial crisis. As of the end of last year, the firm's assets under management had risen to $12.3 billion, reflecting a strong recovery. ​Winton remains committed to its systematic, research-driven approach. The firm's ability to adapt to changing market conditions and its focus on long-term trends suggest potential for sustained performance in the future.
At the LSEG Lipper Fund Awards 2024, Winton Capital Management was honored with the 'Best Fund over 3 Years' award in the Managed Futures category. This accolade recognizes the firm's outstanding risk-adjusted performance over a three-year period. The Awards are based on the Lipper Leader rating for Consistent Return, which evaluates funds using a risk-adjusted performance measure over multiple non-overlapping periods. This methodology ensures that the winners have provided superior consistency and risk-adjusted returns compared to similar funds. This recognition underscores Winton's commitment to delivering high-quality, systematic investment strategies that prioritize consistent performance for investors.
For this list, we picked stocks from Winston Group's 13F portfolio as of the end of the fourth quarter of 2024. We listed them in the ascending order of analysts' average upside potential. These equities are also popular among other hedge funds.
Note: All data was recorded on April 29, 2025.
At Insider Monkey we are obsessed with the stocks that hedge funds pile into. The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A technician in a server room managing a large-scale network of computers.Upside Potential: 35.85%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 78
Arista Networks Inc. (NYSE:ANET) leads in client-to-cloud networking, serving data center, campus, and AI environments with high-performance, scalable, and secure solutions. Its core platform, EOS®, enables automation, programmability, and efficiency. Arista serves major customers like Meta and Microsoft and holds leadership in high-speed Ethernet switching. Its product portfolio spans core networking, cognitive adjacencies, and cognitive software. Amid digital transformation and AI growth, Arista addresses demand with cloud-optimized architectures and AI-specific solutions, including AVA, a natural language AI tool for network operations and observability.
Rosenblatt Securities upgraded its rating on Arista Networks Inc. (NYSE:ANET) from Sell to Neutral on April 29, highlighting two main factors behind the change. Firstly, the firm noted Arista's potential to endure a broader economic downturn, with its outlook for late 2025 and into 2026 remaining strong. Rosenblatt analyst Mike Genovese said in a note:
Following our recent field work, we now think ANET could be another such company given bigger wins at Microsoft, Oracle and Google than we previously expected. It appears that increased tariffs have actually made White Box switching options from China and rest of Asia less attractive, benefiting Arista.
The second reason is that Rosenblatt's earlier Sell thesis has now run its course. That view was driven by worries that Arista's Extensible Operating System (EOS) software would lose relevance within AI factory data centers.
Overall, ANET ranks 8th on our list of billionaire David Harding's stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the growth potential of ANET, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ANET but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at .