Baron Real Estate Fund

Equinix, Inc. (EQIX) is a network neutral operator of 260 data centers across 70 metro areas and 33 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. It provides highly reliable facilities and offers low latency interconnection to and among business partners, networks, and cloud service providers.
Equinix benefits from several long-term secular trends, including increasing internet traffic, IT outsourcing, cloud computing, AI, and mobility. As data and customer needs become more global, Equinix should also be able to leverage its leading global data center platform. We believe Equinix can continue to grow through new data center development, rent increases, and the addition of value-added services supplemented by accretive acquisitions that increase market penetration and reach.

Blackstone Inc. (BX) is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. It has $1 trillion in assets under management, with specialization across Private Equity, Real Estate, Hedge Fund Solutions, and Credit & Insurance.
Blackstone is a best-of-breed global alternative asset manager, with a strong brand, global scale, long-term investment track record, full suite of products, and a proven executive team. The company is still in the early innings of democratizing access to alternative investments for a broader array of investors. Blackstone is asset-light, maintains minimal corporate level debt, and returns most of its cash flow through dividends and share repurchases.

CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE) is a leading commercial real estate services company with the leading market share in all of its major businesses.
We believe CBRE will gain meaningfully from the long-term recovery in the commercial real estate industry. Its leasing and investment sales units have high incremental margins, and we believe its profitability will improve with healthier end markets. We also believe the market under-appreciates the value associated with CBRE’s property management unit given its growing, highly recurring revenue stream and open-ended growth prospects. CBRE is also one of the world’s leading managers of real estate assets.

GDS Holdings Limited (GDS) is a market-leading Asia-based operator of data centers with over 100 data centers in Tier 1 markets in China with 1.5 gigawatts of capcaity. Additionally, GDS has 1 gigawatt of power capacity in Asia outside of China.
We believe that, as the preferred provider to Alibaba and Tencent, as well as other large global technology companies, GDS is poised to benefit from the explosive growth in cloud computing in China and abroad. Cloud adoption is still in the early stages in China, and GDS is capturing more than its fair share of incremental deployments due to its proven track record and carrier-neutral value proposition. Additionally, its first mover advantage in southeast Asia with recent lease signings from major US based global technology companies provide a major growth runway ahead.

Brookfield Corporation (BN) is one of the world's largest alternative asset managers, with $1 trillion in AUM and more than $500 billion of fee-generating AUM. It owns stakes in several publicly listed affiliates as well as other unlisted investments. 
Brookfield Corporation's stake in listed companies, including Brookfield Infrastructure, Business Partners, Renewable Partners, and recently spun off Brookfield Asset Management, is worth $45/share. We see another $25/share in unlisted investments and $10/share in carried interest generated for a total of $80/share, well below the stock's current price. We think the company will profit from growth in alternative asset management, given its superior track record, highly respected CEO, global reach, scale, and diverse product offerings.

Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc. (JLL) is one of the world's largest providers of commercial real estate transaction, consulting, and investment management services through a network of more than 100 offices worldwide.
Jones Lang has a leading brand, sophisticated technology, global platform, deep bench of talent, and a solid balance sheet. Its scale and platform provide a strong moat. We think the company will benefit from stabilization in interest rates and the economy, which should lead to improvement across business lines, in particular leasing and capital markets. We think the company can grow EPS at a double-digit CAGR over the next several years, driven by a cyclical recovery, secular growth tailwinds, market share gains, operating leverage, acquisitions, and share buybacks.

Welltower Inc. (WELL) is a $45 billion diversified health care owner and manager of senior housing, including assisted and independent living. Core to its strategy is to partner with top-tier operators and health systems while providing operators access to its proprietary data analytics platform.
We are optimistic about the prospects for Welltower given the substantial opportunity for cyclical recovery and continued secular growth in its senior housing business through occupancy and rent growth. The company also benefits from its proven ability to recycle capital at attractive rates of returns, premier health care platform, partnerships with top-tier operators, and well-respected management team focused solely on creating value on a per-share basis.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) is a leading global provider of large-scale data center services to enterprises, cloud providers, and network operators. The company has 310 data centers in over 50 metro areas around the globe, with 51% of revenue in North America and the remainder in other regions worldwide.
Digital Realty enjoys strong growth prospects driven by cloud adoption, IT/data center outsourcing, and emerging AI applications. With a recurring revenue model, a sticky customer base with long-term leases, scale advantages, and a strong management team, we think Digital Realty is well positioned to take share. It offers a comprehensive suite of services through its acquisitions of Telx Group (network dense interconnection provider), Equicity (eight European assets), DuPont Fabros (U.S.-based wholesale operator), Ascenty (Brazil-based operator), and InterXion (Europe).

Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) is a $30 billion REIT that owns and operates a diversified portfolio of office and retail buildings, mostly in New York.
We believe Vornado is trading at a highly discounted valuation relative to its liquidation value. In addition, Vornado has several of sources of embedded value in its portfolio that we believe offer additional upside potential. These sources include the improvement in the NYC office portfolio as office workers return, the bottoming of the NYC retail portfolio, and the development of the Penn District. Management appears open to pursuing paths to simplify and improve shareholder returns.

Expedia, Inc. (EXPE) is the largest global online travel agency in the U.S., and the second largest in the world.
We believe that Expedia should benefit from the ongoing shift in the travel industry to online bookings, which is 45% penetrated globally today. We also expect the company to benefit from improved performance of its Expedia brand, Hideaway's transition to instant booking, additions of hotel properties, higher conversion rates, and improvement in margins.

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