A Look at Five Stocks in Spotlight on Wednesday

The S&P 500 futures are slightly in the green today as traders anticipate a ‘Bremain’ outcome for tomorrow’s pivotal vote on whether Britain will leave or stay in the EU.

Among the stocks trending today are SiteOne Landscape Supply Inc (NYSE:SITE), Formula Systems (1985) Ltd. (ADR) (NASDAQ:FORTY), BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), Energy Transfer Equity LP (NYSE:ETE), and Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB). Let’s take a closer look at the latest developments surrounding these stocks and use data from the last round of 13F filings to see what smart money investors think about these stocks.

While there are many metrics that investors can assess in the investment process, the hedge fund sentiment is something that is often overlooked. However, hedge funds and other institutional investors allocate significant resources while making their bets and their long-term focus makes them the perfect investors to emulate. This is supported by our research, which determined that following the small-cap stocks that hedge funds are collectively bullish on can help a smaller investor to beat the S&P 500 by around 95 basis points per month (see the details here).

SiteOne Landscape Reports Earnings

SiteOne Landscape Supply Inc (NYSE:SITE) reported a loss of $0.85 per share for its fiscal first quarter, on revenue of $328.5 million. Organic net sales rose by 23% on the year, while net loss decreased to $5.6 million from $9.8 million reported a year earlier. The company also completed the acquisition of Hydro-Scape Products which included 17 locations. For the full fiscal year, SiteOne expects adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $132 to $140 million. Since the company went public in May, none of the investors in our database reported holding shares in their 13F filings for the end of the first quarter.

Formula Systems Turns In First Quarter Results

Formula Systems (1985) Ltd. (ADR) (NASDAQ:FORTY) reported first quarter earnings of $0.27 per share on revenue of $262.17 million, versus $237.1 million and $0.44 per share it had posted for the same period last year. Net income was negatively affected by increased tax expenses and the appreciation of Formula’s debentures due to exchange rate fluctuations. Shares of the company are up 25% year-to-date so far. None of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey had shares of Formula Systems (1985) Ltd. (ADR) (NASDAQ:FORTY) in their portfolios, according to the last round of 13F filings.

On the next page, we examine Blackberry, Energy Transfer Equity LP, and Williams Companies Inc.

BlackBerry’s Annual Meeting

BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) is in the spotlight today because it is holding its annual general meeting this morning. Shareholders will likely ask tough questions about the company’s hardware business, which has struggled of late. The Priv, Blackberry’s first Android-powered smartphone, has failed to achieve traction and Blackberry’s shares are down by 24% year-to-date. Some investors hope Blackberry will just liquidate itself, while others hope the company will focus more on its higher margin software and services segment. Blackberry is also trending because it is expected to report its first-quarter results tomorrow. Among the funds we track, 24 funds had a long position in BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) at the end of March, unchanged from the previous quarter.

Merger Judge Focuses on ‘Good Faith’ Element

Energy Transfer Equity LP (NYSE:ETE) and Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB) are trending again after Delaware Chancery Court Judge Sam Glasscock said that it matters if Energy Transfer’s lawyer’s findings that the merger can’t close due to tax issues ‘was made in good faith’. Glasscock’s comments were seen as positive for Energy Transfer as shares of the company surged 17% yesterday. It is typically difficult to prove that lawyers are not acting in good faith on an issue. If the merger doesn’t go through, Energy Transfer would save itself from having to pay $6 billion in cash to Williams shareholders. A total of 31 funds from our database had a bullish position in Energy Transfer Equity LP (NYSE:ETE) and 52 top funds were long Williams Companies Inc (NYSE:WMB) at the end of March.

Disclosure: none