Hedge Funds Are Betting On American Tower Corporation (AMT)

With the third-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the fourth quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT).

American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) shareholders have witnessed an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) was in 61 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 62. There were 55 hedge funds in our database with AMT positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that AMT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 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 let’s take a look at the new hedge fund action encompassing American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT).

Charles Akre of Akre Capital Management

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 61 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards AMT over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Charles Akre’s Akre Capital Management has the most valuable position in American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT), worth close to $1.8599 billion, amounting to 11.5% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, which holds a $523.9 million position; 0.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish consist of William von Mueffling’s Cantillon Capital Management, Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’s Alkeon Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Akre Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT), around 11.45% of its 13F portfolio. Manor Road Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 8.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AMT.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, established the biggest position in American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT). Balyasny Asset Management had $35.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Millennium Management also initiated a $16 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new AMT investors: Mark R. Freeman’s Socorro Asset Management, Felix Wai’s Zeno Research, and Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN), The Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD), Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISRG), Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP), Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ:PDD), and General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). This group of stocks’ market values match AMT’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 54 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3732 million. That figure was $4475 million in AMT’s case. Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE:TD) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AMT is 75.6. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately AMT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on AMT were disappointed as the stock returned -1.1% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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.