The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI).
Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) was in 30 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. There were 19 hedge funds in our database with LEVI holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that LEVI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think LEVI Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At second quarter’s end, a total of 30 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 58% from the first quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LEVI 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 Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) was held by Select Equity Group, which reported holding $87.9 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $71.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Royce & Associates, and Alyeska Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Broad Bay Capital allocated the biggest weight to Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI), around 2.3% of its 13F portfolio. Sandler Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.31 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LEVI.
Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) headfirst. GQG Partners, managed by Rajiv Jain, established the most valuable position in Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI). GQG Partners had $71.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also initiated a $38.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Richard Scott Greeder’s Broad Bay Capital, and Andrew Sandler’s Sandler Capital Management.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) but similarly valued. These stocks are Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:FND), Watsco Inc (NYSE:WSO), Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPCE), Bunge Limited (NYSE:BG), Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN), Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN), and CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to LEVI’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| FND | 28 | 1164208 | -10 |
| WSO | 26 | 306144 | 4 |
| SPCE | 18 | 181423 | 1 |
| BG | 40 | 399239 | -4 |
| QGEN | 22 | 482750 | -5 |
| MORN | 24 | 1459482 | -1 |
| CF | 47 | 955523 | 3 |
| Average | 29.3 | 706967 | -1.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $707 million. That figure was $414 million in LEVI’s case. CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPCE) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LEVI is 60.7. 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 LEVI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on LEVI were disappointed as the stock returned -10.5% 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 Levi Strauss & Co (NYSE:LEVI)
Follow Levi Strauss & Co (NYSE:LEVI)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
