Hedge Funds Are Betting On Texas Instruments Incorporated (TXN)

At the end of February we announced the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we predicted that the market will decline by at least 20% in (see why hell is coming). We reversed our stance on March 25th after seeing unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus unleashed by the Fed and the Congress. This is the perfect market for stock pickers, now that the stocks are fully valued again. In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) at the end of the second quarter and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) shareholders have witnessed an increase in enthusiasm from smart money of late. Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) was in 55 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 60. There were 46 hedge funds in our database with TXN holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that TXN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

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. 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 56 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 34% through August 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this junior gold mining stock.. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in America to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. Now we’re going to check out the new hedge fund action surrounding Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN).

What does smart money think about Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN)?

Heading into the third quarter of 2020, a total of 55 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 20% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 43 hedge funds with a bullish position in TXN a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Generation Investment Management was the largest shareholder of Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN), with a stake worth $591.8 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Generation Investment Management was AQR Capital Management, which amassed a stake valued at $359 million. Diamond Hill Capital, Citadel Investment Group, and Alyeska Investment Group 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 Heathbridge Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN), around 4.71% of its 13F portfolio. Bristol Gate Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 4.54 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TXN.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Alyeska Investment Group, managed by Anand Parekh, initiated the most valuable position in Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN). Alyeska Investment Group had $142.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also initiated a $34.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Kevin Cottrell and Chris LaSusa’s KCL Capital, Mikal Patel’s Oribel Capital Management, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN). These stocks are Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP), American Tower Corporation (REIT) (NYSE:AMT), Shopify Inc (NYSE:SHOP), Linde plc (NYSE:LIN), Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM), International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C). This group of stocks’ market caps match TXN’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 61.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3911 million. That figure was $2132 million in TXN’s case. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is the least popular one with only 46 bullish hedge fund positions. Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for TXN is 46.5. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 28.2% in 2020 through August 24th but beat the market by 20.6 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on TXN, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 11.8% since Q2 and outperformed the market.

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