1. ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING)
Fisher Asset Management’s Stake Value: $674,347,000
Percentage of Fisher Asset Management’s 13F Portfolio: 0.37%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 7
ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) is a Dutch banking company which provides financial services including asset management, life and non-life insurance, business lending and mortgage services to clients around the globe. In February, UBS analyst Johan Ekblom raised the firm’s price target on ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) to €17 from €16.30 and reiterated a ‘Buy’ rating on the company shares.
7 out of 924 elite hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held positions worth roughly $686 million in ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) in the fourth quarter of 2021. This is down from 8 hedge funds in the preceding quarter, holding combined stakes worth $693 million.
In the fourth quarter, Fisher Asset Management owned 48.44 million shares of ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) worth $674.34 million, which accounted for 0.37% of the fund’s overall holdings. In comparison, Ken Fisher held 46.38 million shares of the firm in the quarter before.
On March 2, ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) announced that it had stopped pursuing new businesses with Russian entities, and had also waived fees for transactions to Ukraine through its retail markets for personal customers. It also announced a €3 million donation towards UNICEF’s relief efforts to help children in war-affected Ukraine.
Artisan Partners, an investment firm, mentioned ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) in its Q4 2021 investor letter, stating:
“While European bank stocks generally did well in 2021, ING performed exceptionally well—up almost 70% in euros. ING is the largest domestic lender in the Benelux and also has fintech operations with strong market positions in major markets including Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and several Eastern European markets. ING is profitable, and it operates with significant excess capital that it’s accumulated over several years through retained earnings. The pandemic’s onset led to a regulatory moratorium on distributions to shareholders, who reacted by pushing the share price down to levels last seen during the 2008 financial crisis. Back in 2008, ING was thinly capitalized, overdiversified and losing money—a very different profile from its profitable and overcapitalized position in 2020. We saw this as an opportunity and increased our position, and the price rebounded 60% from the 2020 bottom. Even after that impressive gain, the shares remained cheap, trading at 58% of book value—though even that simple statistic understates the undervaluation. At the time, the bank carried an estimated €12 billion of excess capital on a market cap of €30 billion. Net of that excess capital, the shares traded at 4.6X our estimate of normalized earnings. In 2021, conditions changed. The pandemic receded, leading to relaxed regulatory restrictions on shareholder distributions. In addition, profits boomed as provisions set aside for pandemic-era credit losses proved unnecessary. Additionally, a new CEO appointed in July 2020 has done a great job focusing the business on profitable geographies. Changes to the business have both improved profitability and increased the company’s already overcapitalized balance sheet. The share price has rebounded close to book value—a much more reasonable valuation.”
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