Hedge Funds Are Dumping Boston Properties, Inc. (BXP)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 873 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 June 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) based on that data.

Is Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) a buy here? The best stock pickers were in a pessimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets decreased by 8 in recent months. Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 36. Our calculations also showed that BXP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 27 hedge funds in our database with BXP positions at the end of the first quarter.

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 185.4% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Minhua Zhang of Weld Capital Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, plant based food market is expected to explode 100-fold by 2050, so we are checking out this stock pitch. We go through lists like the 10 best growth stocks to buy 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a look at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP).

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

At the end of June, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -30% from the first quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BXP 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 Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) was held by TCI Fund Management, which reported holding $1310 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Adage Capital Management with a $30.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, Waterfront Capital Partners, and Hill Winds Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hill Winds Capital allocated the biggest weight to Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), around 4.28% of its 13F portfolio. TCI Fund Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.27 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BXP.

Judging by the fact that Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) has faced bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes heading into Q3. Interestingly, Renaissance Technologies said goodbye to the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $47.3 million in stock, and Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $14 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 8 funds heading into Q3.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP). These stocks are Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH), Affirm Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFRM), Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF), Duke Realty Corporation (NYSE:DRE), Brookfield Property Partners LP (NASDAQ:BPY), Amcor plc (NYSE:AMCR), and Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to BXP’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1704 million. That figure was $1398 million in BXP’s case. Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Duke Realty Corporation (NYSE:DRE) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BXP is 17. 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% in 2021 through October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BXP as the stock returned 3.7% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/22) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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