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 June 30th, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT).
Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT) has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 25. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that FRPT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Do Hedge Funds Think FRPT Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 47% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards FRPT 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.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Kris Jenner, Gordon Bussard, Graham McPhail’s Rock Springs Capital Management has the biggest position in Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT), worth close to $82.5 million, corresponding to 1.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Millennium Management, led by Israel Englander, holding a $44.4 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners and Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Rock Springs Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT), around 1.63% of its 13F portfolio. Infini Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.4 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FRPT.
Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, initiated the most valuable position in Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT). Citadel Investment Group had $9.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also initiated a $3.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold’s LMR Partners, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT). We will take a look at Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE:HOG), Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT), First Financial Bankshares Inc (NASDAQ:FFIN), Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (NYSE:COG), Envista Holdings Corporation (NYSE:NVST), Pacific Biosciences of California (NASDAQ:PACB), and BanColombia S.A. (NYSE:CIB). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble FRPT’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| HOG | 37 | 1121681 | 9 |
| MAT | 25 | 928960 | 0 |
| FFIN | 8 | 25565 | -3 |
| COG | 25 | 348750 | 5 |
| NVST | 38 | 1136990 | 4 |
| PACB | 28 | 1644777 | 4 |
| CIB | 3 | 62898 | 0 |
| Average | 23.4 | 752803 | 2.7 |
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 $753 million. That figure was $271 million in FRPT’s case. Envista Holdings Corporation (NYSE:NVST) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BanColombia S.A. (NYSE:CIB) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Freshpet Inc (NASDAQ:FRPT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FRPT is 75.7. 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 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 24.9% in 2021 through October 15th and beat the market again by 4.5 percentage points. Unfortunately FRPT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on FRPT were disappointed as the stock returned -8.9% since the end of June (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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Freshpet Inc. (NASDAQ:FRPT)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
