A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG) .
Is HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG) an exceptional investment today? The smart money is really getting more bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 2 recently. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with HRG holdings at the end of September. At the end of this article we will also compare HRG to other stocks including Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS), Education Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:EDR), and Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPB)
Follow Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPB)
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
ssguy/Shutterstock.com
What does the smart money think about HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a rise of 8% from the second quarter of 2016. By comparison, 22 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in HRG heading into this year. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Ian Cumming and Joseph Steinberg’s Leucadia National has the biggest position in HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG), worth close to $731.6 million, amounting to 60.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Omega Advisors, led by Leon Cooperman, which holds a $150.8 million position; the fund has 4.7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Jason Karp’s Tourbillon Capital Partners, Marc Lisker, Glenn Fuhrman and John Phelan’s MSDC Management and James H. Litinsky’s JHL Capital Group. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
Now, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Indaba Capital Management, led by Derek C. Schrier, created the largest position in HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG). Indaba Capital Management had $36 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management also made a $1.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new HRG positions are Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Michael Platt and William Reeves’ BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG) but similarly valued. These stocks are Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS), Education Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:EDR), Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB), and Proofpoint Inc (NASDAQ:PFPT). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to HRG’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| LDOS | 27 | 644414 | 1 |
| EDR | 11 | 140116 | -3 |
| BLKB | 14 | 126784 | 4 |
| PFPT | 27 | 220468 | 7 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 20 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $283 million. That figure was $1.54 billion in HRG’s case. Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Education Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:EDR) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. HRG Group Inc (NYSE:HRG) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard LDOS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: None
