In this article we will analyze whether Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) is a good investment right now by following the lead of some of the best investors in the world and piggybacking their ideas. There’s no better way to get these firms’ immense resources and analytical capabilities working for us than to follow their lead into their best ideas. While not all of these picks will be winners, our research shows that these picks historically outperformed the market by double digits annually.
Is Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) ready to rally soon? Money managers were taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 8 recently. Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) was in 44 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 50. Our calculations also showed that ATH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.
Matthew Halbower of Pentwater Capital
At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation, which is why we are checking out this inflation play. We go through lists like 10 best gold stocks to buy to identify promising stocks. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Now let’s take a peek at the key hedge fund action regarding Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH).
Do Hedge Funds Think ATH Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 44 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 22% from the fourth quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ATH over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) was held by Samlyn Capital, which reported holding $269.8 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Magnetar Capital with a $133.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Lakewood Capital Management, Pentwater Capital Management, and Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position OCO Capital Partners allocated the biggest weight to Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH), around 50.41% of its 13F portfolio. Serengeti Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 12.81 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATH.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Pentwater Capital Management, managed by Matthew Halbower, assembled the most valuable position in Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH). Pentwater Capital Management had $97.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Emil Zoellner’s Alpine Associates also initiated a $22.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Wayne Cooperman’s Cobalt Capital Management, Peter Seuss’s Prana Capital Management, and Usman Waheed’s Strycker View Capital.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN), Regency Centers Corp (NYSE:REG), Aramark (NYSE:ARMK), Inphi Corporation (NYSE:IPHI), Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDR), Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA (NYSE:EBR), and Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to ATH’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MORN | 25 | 1044340 | 6 |
| REG | 17 | 132833 | -7 |
| ARMK | 39 | 1062881 | 6 |
| IPHI | 34 | 1991339 | 0 |
| BLDR | 48 | 1694149 | 11 |
| EBR | 5 | 1208 | -1 |
| LEVI | 19 | 253280 | -2 |
| Average | 26.7 | 882861 | 1.9 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $883 million. That figure was $1349 million in ATH’s case. Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA (NYSE:EBR) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATH is 81.7. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and still beat the market by 6.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ATH as the stock returned 23.5% since the end of Q1 (through 6/18) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
Follow Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
