Hedge Funds Are Dumping Columbia Sportswear Company (COLM)

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM).

Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 32. COLM investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with COLM holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that COLM isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a gander at the latest hedge fund action regarding Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM).

Clint Carlson of Carlson Capital

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -28% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards COLM over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, holds the largest position in Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM). Arrowstreet Capital has a $87.5 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by AQR Capital Management, led by Cliff Asness, holding a $57.5 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism consist of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Beddow Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM), around 0.22% of its 13F portfolio. Carlson Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.18 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to COLM.

Due to the fact that Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) has witnessed a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that slashed their entire stakes in the third quarter. Interestingly, Seth Cogswell’s Running Oak Capital dumped the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth about $5.5 million in stock, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $2.8 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 8 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM). We will take a look at Rapid7 Inc (NASDAQ:RPD), Houlihan Lokey Inc (NYSE:HLI), II-VI, Inc. (NASDAQ:IIVI), Cyberark Software Ltd (NASDAQ:CYBR), Silicon Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ:SLAB), Saia Inc (NASDAQ:SAIA), and Popular Inc (NASDAQ:BPOP). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble COLM’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $362 million. That figure was $250 million in COLM’s case. Popular Inc (NASDAQ:BPOP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Houlihan Lokey Inc (NYSE:HLI) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Columbia Sportswear Company (NASDAQ:COLM) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for COLM is 26.7. 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 negative signal and 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 29.6% in 2021 and surpassed the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately COLM wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); COLM investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.9% since the end of September (through 12/31) 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 in 2021.

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