First Eagle U.S. Fund Q1 2026 Portfolio Review

First Eagle U.S. Fund A Shares returned 1.17% in the first quarter of 2026, with performance driven by gold bullion, Exxon Mobil, Noble Corporation, IPG Photonics, and SLB. Detractors included Workday, Oracle, Salesforce, Meta Platforms, and Universal Health Services. The update is a portfolio attribution snapshot with limited broader market impact.

Analysis

The pattern here reads less like a broad “value beats growth” rotation and more like a barbell between hard-asset cash generators and software/platform duration assets. Energy services and E&P exposure still has room to outperform if upstream capex remains disciplined, because the market is paying for free cash flow durability rather than volume growth; that tends to persist for multiple quarters, not weeks. The stronger message is that investors are still willing to pay for inflation-resistant earnings streams, while penalizing long-duration software franchises when visibility on monetization or AI spend efficiency is shaky.

The software losers matter more as a signal than as a single-quarter P&L issue. Negative positioning in ORCL, CRM, and META suggests the market is becoming less forgiving on “AI optionality” and more focused on proof of incremental ROI, which can pressure multiples for several months even if revenue holds up. For UHS, the downside likely reflects skepticism around reimbursement and utilization mix; that category can lag for a few quarters before fundamentals catch down, so this may be a slower-burn short than the tech names.

The contrarian read is that the energy winners may be somewhat crowded, while the software drawdown may be setting up a tradable mean-reversion if earnings execution stabilizes. XOM and NE are benefiting from a macro bid for balance-sheet resilience, but the upside from here likely depends on oil holding firm and not just sentiment. Conversely, META/CRM/ORCL can recover sharply if management teams show any evidence that AI spend is directly improving revenue conversion or margin, because positioning has likely been reduced enough to create a squeeze on even modest beats.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long XOM vs. short a software basket (ORCL/CRM) for 6-12 weeks: prefer the pair as a relative-value expression of cash-flow resilience over execution risk; target 6-8% spread capture, stop if software guidance improves materially.