Hedge Funds Are Cashing Out Of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS)

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 March 31st, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS).

Is Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) the right investment to pursue these days? Hedge funds were turning less bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions fell by 1 lately. Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) was in 62 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 63. Our calculations also showed that LVS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Parag Vora of HG Vora Capital Management

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Do Hedge Funds Think LVS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 62 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -2% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in LVS over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) was held by Melvin Capital Management, which reported holding $334.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $243.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, D1 Capital Partners, and Palestra Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Franklin Street Capital allocated the biggest weight to Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS), around 6.22% of its 13F portfolio. Columbus Hill Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 5.43 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LVS.

Judging by the fact that Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there is a sect of money managers who were dropping their entire stakes last quarter. At the top of the heap, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global dropped the biggest investment of the 750 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $168.5 million in stock. Daniel S. Och’s fund, OZ Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $109.8 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds last quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS). These stocks are Rocket Companies, Inc. (NYSE:RKT), Carvana Co. (NYSE:CVNA), America Movil SAB de CV (NYSE:AMX), TC Energy Corporation (NYSE:TRP), Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS), Eni SpA (NYSE:E), and Banco Bradesco SA (NYSE:BBD). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to LVS’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1230 million. That figure was $2441 million in LVS’s case. Carvana Co. (NYSE:CVNA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Eni SpA (NYSE:E) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LVS is 81.9. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and beat the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately LVS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LVS were disappointed as the stock returned -8.4% since the end of March (through 6/11) 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.

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