The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA)?
Is Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA) a buy, sell, or hold? Investors who are in the know were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 1 lately. Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 23. Our calculations also showed that ENVA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 21 hedge funds in our database with ENVA positions at the end of the first quarter.
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 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.
Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA).
Do Hedge Funds Think ENVA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 5% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 21 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in ENVA a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA) was held by 683 Capital Partners, which reported holding $104.3 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $55 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Portolan Capital Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and Empyrean Capital Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Second Curve Capital allocated the biggest weight to Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA), around 8.59% of its 13F portfolio. 683 Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.6 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ENVA.
As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Empyrean Capital Partners, managed by Michael A. Price and Amos Meron, established the most valuable position in Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA). Empyrean Capital Partners had $14 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA). We will take a look at SilverCrest Metals Inc. (NYSE:SILV), Corecivic Inc. (NYSE:CXW), Customers Bancorp Inc (NYSE:CUBI), LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT), OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC), Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN), and Nautilus Biotechnology Inc (NASDAQ:NAUT). All of these stocks’ market caps match ENVA’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SILV | 14 | 121376 | 4 |
| CXW | 13 | 97190 | -5 |
| CUBI | 17 | 79514 | 2 |
| LMAT | 10 | 13097 | 0 |
| OCFC | 18 | 59922 | 3 |
| GRPN | 28 | 321089 | 3 |
| NAUT | 20 | 185115 | 2 |
| Average | 17.1 | 125329 | 1.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $125 million. That figure was $252 million in ENVA’s case. Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ENVA is 68. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and beat the market again by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately ENVA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ENVA were disappointed as the stock returned 1.9% since the end of June (through 10/22) 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.
Follow Enova International Inc. (NYSE:ENVA)
Follow Enova International Inc. (NYSE:ENVA)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
