A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING) .
Is Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING) a buy right now? Prominent investors are surely betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions moved up by 3 lately. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with WING positions at the end of the 2016 third quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as ICF International Inc (NASDAQ:ICFI), AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAG), and Klondex Mines Ltd (NYSE:KLDX) to gather more data points.
Follow Wingstop Inc. (NASDAQ:WING)
Follow Wingstop Inc. (NASDAQ:WING)
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
Foodio/Shutterstock.com
With all of this in mind, we’re going to review the new action encompassing Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING).
How have hedgies been trading Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, an increase of 38% from the second quarter of 2016. On the other hand, there were a total of 9 hedge funds with a bullish position in WING at the beginning of this year. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, 12 West Capital Management, led by Joel Ramin, holds the number one position in Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING). The fund reportedly has a $30.9 million position in the stock, comprising 4.4% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Passport Capital, led by John Burbank, which manages a $28.4 million position; 0.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining professional money managers with similar optimism consist of Doug Gordon, Jon Hilsabeck and Don Jabro’s Shellback Capital, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Balyasny Asset Management, led by Dmitry Balyasny, established the biggest position in Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING). According to regulatory filings, the fund had $4.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Millennium Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, also initiated a $2.6 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new WING investors: Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING). We will take a look at ICF International Inc (NASDAQ:ICFI), AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAG), Klondex Mines Ltd (NYSE:KLDX), and Teladoc Inc (NYSE:TDOC). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to WING’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICFI | 11 | 37753 | 2 |
| AMAG | 19 | 261026 | 0 |
| KLDX | 8 | 42753 | 1 |
| TDOC | 6 | 46224 | -1 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 11 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $97 million. That figure was $87 million in WING’s case. AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Teladoc Inc (NYSE:TDOC) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Wingstop Inc (NASDAQ:WING) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard AMAG might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: none.
