Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks initially suffered the most but many of these stocks delivered strong returns since November and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment towards Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) changed recently.
Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 18. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with KLR holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that KLR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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David Atterbury of Whetstone Capital Advisors
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Do Hedge Funds Think KLR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 72% from the first quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in KLR over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) was held by North Run Capital, which reported holding $17.6 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Royce & Associates with a $15.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Portolan Capital Management, Whetstone Capital Advisors, and Cheyne Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position North Run Capital allocated the biggest weight to Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR), around 11.99% of its 13F portfolio. Cheyne Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.61 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to KLR.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Whetstone Capital Advisors, managed by David Atterbury, assembled the biggest position in Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR). Whetstone Capital Advisors had $8.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management also initiated a $3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new KLR positions are John Orrico’s Water Island Capital, Marc Lisker, Glenn Fuhrman and John Phelan’s MSDC Management, and Steven Clark’s Omni Partners.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Aurora Mobile Limited (NASDAQ:JG), XOMA Corp (NASDAQ:XOMA), Source Capital, Inc. (NYSE:SOR), Athira Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHA), The Cato Corporation (NYSE:CATO), AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AQB), and Gamida Cell Ltd. (NASDAQ:GMDA). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble KLR’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| JG | 4 | 3562 | -2 |
| XOMA | 4 | 137822 | -1 |
| SOR | 1 | 37087 | -1 |
| ATHA | 17 | 98465 | 3 |
| CATO | 13 | 26436 | -1 |
| AQB | 4 | 41237 | -6 |
| GMDA | 14 | 53284 | 0 |
| Average | 8.1 | 56842 | -1.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $57 million. That figure was $98 million in KLR’s case. Athira Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Source Capital, Inc. (NYSE:SOR) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Kaleyra, Inc. (NYSE:KLR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for KLR 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 gained 24.9% in 2021 through October 15th and still beat the market by 4.5 percentage points. Unfortunately KLR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on KLR were disappointed as the stock returned -12.7% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/15) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Kaleyra Inc. (NYSE:KLR)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
