Varied Growth Drivers Led ClearBridge Investments Growth Strategy to Add The Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW)

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management company, released its “ClearBridge Growth Strategy” second-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. US equities significantly rallied in the second quarter, with the S&P 500 returning 10.9%. As the risk-on sentiment took hold, the benchmark Russell Midcap Growth Index advanced a market-leading 18.2%. Growth stocks led across market caps, outperforming their value counterparts. In this environment, the strategy outperformed the benchmark, driven by strong performance from the “mid cap plus” segment that the Strategy focuses on and solid stock selection in IT, industrials, and financials. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, ClearBridge Growth Strategy highlighted stocks such as The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW). The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) develops, manufactures, and distributes paints, coatings, and related products. The one-month return of The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) was -3.79%, and its shares lost 5.89% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 16, 2025, The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) stock closed at $353.20 per share, with a market capitalization of $88.065 billion.

ClearBridge Growth Strategy stated the following regarding The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

"We also added global hotel and resort operator Hilton Worldwide and paint and coatings producer The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW). Sherwin-Williams is a high-quality company with share gain opportunities and is well-positioned to benefit from accelerating earnings growth as housing turnover normalizes higher over the coming years. We also like the defensive characteristics of the company’s business model with strong through-cycle pricing power and raw material costs, largely downstream derivatives of oil refining, which are macro linked and often act as a natural offset in periods of volume decline. The company also stands to benefit as a division of competitor PPG is taken private and is likely to close stores."

The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. According to our database, 67 hedge fund portfolios held The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) at the end of the second quarter, compared to 68 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the potential of The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

In another article, we covered The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW) and shared the list of stocks Jim Cramer discussed. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.