Hedge Funds Are Coming Back To International Game Technology PLC (IGT)

With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the second quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT).

International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT) has seen an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT) was in 37 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 37. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that IGT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

If you’d ask most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as slow, old financial tools of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at present, Our researchers look at the bigwigs of this club, about 850 funds. These investment experts oversee bulk of the smart money’s total capital, and by shadowing their unrivaled stock picks, Insider Monkey has determined numerous investment strategies that have historically exceeded the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Israel Englander of Millennium 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 battery 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 check out the latest hedge fund action surrounding International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 37 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 48% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 25 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in IGT a year ago. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $44.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Millennium Management with a $32.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Intrinsic Edge Capital, Islet Management, and Black-and-White Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 1060 Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT), around 5.59% of its 13F portfolio. Stormborn Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 2.98 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IGT.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Islet Management, managed by Joseph Samuels, created the largest position in International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT). Islet Management had $15.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Seth Wunder’s Black-and-White Capital also made a $14 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new IGT positions are Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Brian Gustavson and Andrew Haley’s 1060 Capital Management, and Jay Genzer’s Thames Capital Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at HB Fuller Co (NYSE:FUL), National Health Investors Inc (NYSE:NHI), Installed Building Products Inc (NYSE:IBP), GATX Corporation (NYSE:GATX), HMS Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:HMSY), Cogent Communications Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CCOI), and Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to IGT’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $239 million. That figure was $237 million in IGT’s case. Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand National Health Investors Inc (NYSE:NHI) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks International Game Technology PLC (NYSE:IGT) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IGT is 90. 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 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 returned 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th but still managed to beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on IGT as the stock returned 47.9% since the end of March (through 6/25) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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