We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) based on that data.
Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) was in 46 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 49. VST has experienced an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 39 hedge funds in our database with VST holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that VST isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think VST Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 46 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 18% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VST over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) was held by Oaktree Capital Management, which reported holding $529.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Avenue Capital with a $113.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Angelo Gordon & Co, Renaissance Technologies, and Zimmer Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Avenue Capital allocated the biggest weight to Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST), around 78.53% of its 13F portfolio. Highland Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 30.38 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VST.
Consequently, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Zimmer Partners, managed by Stuart J. Zimmer, assembled the most outsized position in Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST). Zimmer Partners had $66.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jacob Mitchell’s Antipodes Partners also made a $31.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new VST investors: Edward A. Mule’s Silver Point Capital, Jeffrey Altman’s Owl Creek Asset Management, and Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme (FAIRX).
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST). We will take a look at Guidewire Software Inc (NYSE:GWRE), Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI), The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN), US Foods Holding Corp. (NYSE:USFD), Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE:MRO), and Kinross Gold Corporation (NYSE:KGC). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to VST’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| GWRE | 33 | 1534269 | -2 |
| OHI | 25 | 190542 | 10 |
| NYT | 48 | 2399824 | -2 |
| CIEN | 27 | 327611 | 3 |
| USFD | 40 | 1489049 | -4 |
| MRO | 29 | 423870 | 3 |
| KGC | 27 | 444920 | -9 |
| Average | 32.7 | 972869 | -0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $973 million. That figure was $1254 million in VST’s case. The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (NYSE:OHI) is the least popular one with only 25 bullish hedge fund positions. Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VST is 83.8. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately VST wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VST were disappointed as the stock returned -0.4% since the end of March (through 6/18) 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 Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
