Stocks, especially the once high flying technology stocks, had a lousy start to the new year. QQQ lost 9% of its value in January. We aren’t certain about the bubbly technology stocks that trade for ridiculously high multiples of their revenues, but we believe top hedge fund stocks will deliver positive returns for the rest of the year. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) at the end of the third quarter and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.
WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) was in 56 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic was previously 52. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. WSC has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment recently. There were 52 hedge funds in our database with WSC positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that WSC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
Robert Pohly of Samlyn Capital
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. With all of this in mind we’re going to analyze the key hedge fund action encompassing WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC).
Do Hedge Funds Think WSC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 56 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 8% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards WSC over the last 25 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
More specifically, Eminence Capital was the largest shareholder of WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC), with a stake worth $270.9 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Eminence Capital was Broad Bay Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $137.2 million. Samlyn Capital, Point State Capital, and Permian Investment Partners were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Clearfield Capital allocated the biggest weight to WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC), around 22.04% of its 13F portfolio. Broad Bay Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 17 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to WSC.
Consequently, some big names have jumped into WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) headfirst. Samlyn Capital, managed by Robert Pohly, assembled the most outsized position in WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC). Samlyn Capital had $132.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Joseph Samuels’s Islet Management also made a $48.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new WSC positions are Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital, Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners, and Louis Bacon’s Moore Global Investments.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC). We will take a look at Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG), Pinnacle Financial Partners (NASDAQ:PNFP), Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI), Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG), Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE:SF), Donaldson Company, Inc. (NYSE:DCI), and Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to WSC’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PSTG | 28 | 714127 | -3 |
| PNFP | 20 | 68981 | 7 |
| OHI | 15 | 112812 | -5 |
| JHG | 24 | 1372412 | 2 |
| SF | 20 | 443560 | -4 |
| DCI | 25 | 247320 | 4 |
| WK | 23 | 582753 | 2 |
| Average | 22.1 | 505995 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $506 million. That figure was $1968 million in WSC’s case. Pure Storage, Inc. (NYSE:PSTG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for WSC is 89. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks returned 29.6% in 2021 and managed to beat the market by another 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on WSC as the stock returned 16.8% since the end of September (through 1/31) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
