Bearing Point Dumps Sprouts, But the Salad Might Still Be Fresh

On November 12, 2025, Bearing Point Capital, LLC did what every jilted lover does at 2 a.m.-filed a form with the SEC confirming it had sold 22,893 shares of Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM +5.20%). The move slashed their position by roughly $4.7 million, which, in hedge fund terms, is like downgrading from a private jet to a very fancy Zipcar.

What actually happened

Per an SEC 13F filing (the quarterly “Here’s What I Bought While You Weren’t Looking” report), Bearing Point dumped a solid chunk of Sprouts in Q3. The stake’s value nosedived from representing 1.2% of fund AUM to just 0.3%. To put that in perspective: if their portfolio were a salad, Sprouts used to be the arugula. Now it’s the sad parsley garnish no one asked for.

Post-trade, SFM made up just 0.32% of their 13F assets-$580.98 million in reportable holdings. That’s commitment level: “still answering your texts, but only to say I’m busy.”

What else to know (aka the “Who’s Still at the Party?” list)

Bearing Point’s current top holdings read like a 2025 tech group chat:

Nvidia (NVDA +0.33%): $35.5 million (6.1% of AUM) – The golden child. The Beyoncé of semiconductors.
Apple (AAPL -0.81%): $23.5 million (4.1% of AUM) – Still invited, but showing up in last year’s jeans.
Microsoft (MSFT +0.48%): $18.3 million (3.1% of AUM) – That reliable coworker who brings low-fat yogurt to office parties.
Alphabet (GOOGL 1.58%, GOOG 1.48%): $15.6 million (2.7% of AUM) – The one who insists on “open floor plans” and “synergy.”
Broadcom (AVGO +0.77%): $14.9 million (2.6% of AUM) – Quietly competent. Owns the room once you realize it runs half the internet.

Meanwhile, Sprouts Farmers Market traded at $78.02 on November 11, 2025-down 47% over the past year. That’s not just underperforming the S&P 500 by 60 percentage points. That’s getting ghosted so hard your dating app deletes your profile.

And yes, the stock is still 56% below its 52-week high. But let’s not confuse a discount with a distressed asset. This is less “fire sale,” more “quietly having a midlife crisis.”

Company overview

Metric	Value
Revenue (TTM)	$8.65 billion
Net income (TTM)	$513.45 million
Price (as of market close November 11, 2025)	$78.02
One-year price change	(47%)

Company snapshot

Sprouts Farmers Market:

Sells food that doesn’t turn into a science experiment after three days. Think produce, meat, seafood, vitamins, bakery-you know, the stuff people eat when they’ve googled “am I low on magnesium?”
Generates revenue the old-fashioned way: by making you walk past $8 kombucha to get to the kale.
Targets health-conscious Americans who pronounce “quinoa” correctly and own yoga pants they actually wear to yoga.

They run hundreds of stores across 23 states, which means they’ve either cracked the healthy grocery code or are really good at real estate in suburbs where the Whole Foods is “too bougie.”

Their edge? Fresh, natural, organic. Their appeal? Surviving the brutal grocery wars with a product mix that says “I care about clean labels and also my budget.”

Yeah, they’re in the consumer defensive sector-which, let’s be real, is Wall Street’s way of saying “people still need food, even during a corporate restructuring.”

Foolish take

Bearing Point opened its Sprouts position in Q2 2025 at an average of $165 a share. By Q3, they sold over half at $109. That’s not just a loss. That’s a hedge fund saying, “I thought this was a growth story, but turns out it’s a cautionary tale.”

Was it poor execution? Market panic? Or did someone read the earnings call transcript and hear the faint, echoing sound of a CFO using the phrase “operational headwinds” three times in one sentence?

Either way, the panic seems overdone. From early 2024 to 2025, Sprouts went from ~$50 to $180, and its P/E ratio ballooned from 20 to nearly 50. That part? Yeah, that was a bubble. A very green, very organic bubble.

But now? Shares trade at 16x earnings. That’s not “cheap” like a Target clearance rack. It’s “reasonable adult” cheap. Like buying the store-brand champagne for a birthday because you’re saving for a house.

And let’s not forget: in their latest quarter, Sprouts delivered 13% revenue growth, 6% same-store sales growth, and a 34% jump in EPS. That’s not a company on life support. That’s a company squeezing better margins out of every bunch of kale.

They’ve got consistent free cash flow (the corporate equivalent of a trust fund), a $1 billion buyback program (on an $8 billion market cap-that’s basically a “I still believe in us” vow renewal), and a tailwind from Americans finally realizing they can’t live on DoorDash and TikTok recipes forever.

So is Sprouts broken? No. Is it on a redemption arc? Absolutely. This isn’t a “sell because Bearing Point did” situation. It’s a “buy because everyone else is too busy refreshing Nvidia tweets” situation.

The salad’s still fresh. You’re just not looking in the right aisle. 🥬

Glossary

13F reportable assets: The quarterly financial equivalent of subpoenaed text messages-what big money actually owns, not what they tell you at parties.

Assets under management (AUM): The total value of someone else’s money that a firm gets to play with. Bonuses often scale accordingly.

Net position change: When a fund goes from “I’m all in” to “let’s just be friends.”

Top holdings: The stocks the fund brags about at conferences. Usually in the order they wish they’d bought more of.

Trailing twelve months (TTM): The last 12 months of financials-useful because sometimes “forward guidance” means “we’re making it up as we go.”

Compound annual growth rate (CAGR): The math trick that makes a bumpy ride look like a smooth climb. Very useful in PowerPoint.

Consumer defensive sector: Companies that sell things people need even during economic meltdowns-like food, soap, and emotional support snacks.

2025-11-13 08:05