Barclays’ Americas Top Picks List is regarded as a trustworthy and thoroughly researched report among investors. The analyst firm has included Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI), MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), and Panera Bread Co (NASDAQ:PNRA) in its latest list as the primary retail stocks with high upside potential.
Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI) has gained a place in Barclays list because of its distinguished growth story and the analysis firm has put a price target of $38 for its stock. The apparel maker initiated margin expansion efforts, Innovate-to-Elevate, along with its merger and acquisition growth strategy. Barclays believes that these two factors could help the company achieve EPS growth of 20% in the longer run.
Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI) executed 4-for-1 stock split in March 2015 under which, every existing shareowner of the company received three additional shares against every single share held as of record on Feb 9, 2015. Richard A. Noll, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Hanes, mentioned the shareholder value creation of the company. He said, “We have posted record results for sales, adjusted operating profit, and adjusted earnings per share the past two years and our guidance for 2015 would represent another year of record results.” Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI) has paid $220 million in cash dividends since its first cash dividend announced in June 2013. The apparel manufacturer completed the acquisition of Knights Apparel, leading seller of collegiate logo apparel, on April 8, 2015 valuing Knights Apparel at $200 million.
The shares of Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI) are up 18.49% in 2015 and are currently trading at $33.32. Smart Money is bullish over the stock of Hanesbrands Inc., as majority of the hedge fund managers tracked at Insider Monkey have raised their stake in the apparel manufacturer. However, the net invested amount slid slightly to $956.68 million from the previous quarter aggregate investments of $983.77 million. Among the 34 hedge fund managers holding positions in the company, John Shapiro of Chieftain Capital held a large position including 6.93 million shares for market value of $232.08 million.
Why are we interested in the 13F filings of a select group of hedge funds? We use these filings to determine the top 15 small-cap stocks held by these elite funds based on 16 years of research that showed their top small-cap picks are much more profitable than both their large-cap stocks and the broader market as a whole. These small-cap stocks beat the S&P 500 Total Return Index by an average of nearly one percentage point per month in our backtests, which were conducted over the period of 1999 to 2012. Moreover, since the beginning of forward testing from August 2012, the strategy worked just as our research predicted, outperforming the market every year and returning 135% over the last 34 months, which is more than 80 percentage points higher than the returns of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) (see more details).
