Do Hedge Funds Love Lancaster Colony Corporation (LANC)?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC) in this article.

Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 26. LANC has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with LANC holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that LANC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

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. Now we’re going to take a glance at the key hedge fund action regarding Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC).

Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp

Do Hedge Funds Think LANC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At third quarter’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 17% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LANC over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Renaissance Technologies, holds the largest position in Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC). Renaissance Technologies has a $68.5 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. On Renaissance Technologies’s heels is Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management, with a $41.7 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Mark Coe’s Intrinsic Edge Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Intrinsic Edge Capital allocated the biggest weight to Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC), around 1.13% of its 13F portfolio. Segantii Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.3 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LANC.

Consequently, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Tudor Investment Corp, managed by Paul Tudor Jones, initiated the largest position in Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC). Tudor Investment Corp had $3.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $1.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new LANC positions are Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Peter Algert’s Algert Global.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC). We will take a look at Simpson Manufacturing Co, Inc. (NYSE:SSD), Shoals Technologies Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHLS), Papa John’s International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PZZA), Shell Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:SHLX), The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (NYSE:THG), FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN), and Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP). This group of stocks’ market values match LANC’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $224 million. That figure was $251 million in LANC’s case. Papa John’s International, Inc. (NASDAQ:PZZA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Shell Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:SHLX) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Lancaster Colony Corporation (NASDAQ:LANC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LANC is 60. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 gained 29.6% in 2021 and beat the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately LANC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LANC were disappointed as the stock returned -1.4% since the end of September (through 12/31) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.