By Tim McLaughlin
BOSTON (Reuters) - Fidelity's Contrafund, the biggest mutual fund investor in Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc (N:CMG), said it had held onto its entire stake during the fourth quarter even as an outbreak of food-borne illness in the restaurant chain pummeled its shares.
"We held steady our investment in Chipotle, a longtime holding, deciding to hang in there, based in part on management's focus on productivity and comparable-restaurant sales," Contrafund portfolio manager Will Danoff said in a fourth-quarter update released this week.
Chipotle hurt Contrafund's performance the most, shaving half a percentage point off the $110 billion fund's return in the fourth quarter, when its shares lost about a third of their value because of the E. coli outbreak. The fund's total return of 6.34 percent in the quarter lagged the S&P 500 benchmark's 7.04 percent, according to Morningstar Inc.
Danoff is one of the mutual fund industry's most influential investors, outperforming 99 percent of his peers over the past 15 years. His fund held a 6.29 percent stake in Chipotle as of Nov. 30.
Last month, Chipotle said it might never pinpoint what caused the outbreak, which was linked to two restaurants in Kansas and Oklahoma and caused dozens of illnesses.
As Danoff noted, Chipotle has grown rapidly on the appeal of its "food with integrity" strategy. In December, the company lowered its fourth-quarter forecast for same-store sales, and analysts downgraded the stock.
After falling below $400 on Jan. 12, Chipotle shares have rebounded somewhat, closing on Tuesday at $469.52.
Meanwhile, the start to 2016 has been rocky for fund managers, with some already showing losses of more than 10 percent.
Year to date, the Contrafund is down 8.47 percent, compared with a 7.88 percent loss, including dividends, for the S&P 500 benchmark. Large-cap fund managers as a group are down 9.39 percent, according to Morningstar data.
Danoff did not mention any new, big positions in his quarterly commentary letter. He said he had added "a bit" to his stake in General Electric (N:GE) Co but remains significantly underweight in that stock versus the S&P 500.