Edgewell Personal Care Company (EPC): Hedge Funds Are Coming Back

Is Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 37. EPC investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with EPC positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that EPC 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 check out the key hedge fund action regarding Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC).

Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 10% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 21 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in EPC a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, GAMCO Investors was the largest shareholder of Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC), with a stake worth $65 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing GAMCO Investors was Woodline Partners, which amassed a stake valued at $20.6 million. Tremblant Capital, Ancora Advisors, and Clearline Capital 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 Lodge Hill Capital allocated the biggest weight to Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC), around 1.14% of its 13F portfolio. Clearline Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.7 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EPC.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Lodge Hill Capital, managed by Clint Murray, assembled the largest position in Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC). Lodge Hill Capital had $3.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mika Toikka’s AlphaCrest Capital Management also initiated a $2.7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EPC positions are Renaissance Technologies, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC). We will take a look at Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (NYSE:VVNT), Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCPH), CareTrust REIT Inc (NASDAQ:CTRE), Patrick Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:PATK), BancFirst Corporation (NASDAQ:BANF), The Buckle, Inc. (NYSE:BKE), and SJW Group (NYSE:SJW). This group of stocks’ market values match EPC’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $123 million. That figure was $144 million in EPC’s case. Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCPH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (NYSE:VVNT) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EPC is 58.9. 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 gained 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on EPC as the stock returned 26.4% since the end of Q3 (through 12/31) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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