We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 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 March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL) based on that data.
AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 28. UHAL investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with UHAL holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that UHAL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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David Abrams of Abrams Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think UHAL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 10% from the fourth quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in UHAL a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, David Abrams’s Abrams Capital Management has the number one position in AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL), worth close to $343.8 million, amounting to 7.7% of its total 13F portfolio. On Abrams Capital Management’s heels is Yacktman Asset Management, managed by Donald Yacktman, which holds a $155.7 million position; the fund has 1.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that hold long positions consist of Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Jonathan Esfandi’s JNE Partners and Martin Whitman’s Third Avenue Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position JNE Partners allocated the biggest weight to AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL), around 24.73% of its 13F portfolio. Abrams Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 7.74 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to UHAL.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Scopia Capital, managed by Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich, initiated the most valuable position in AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL). Scopia Capital had $16.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management also initiated a $1.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new UHAL positions are Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE:DAR), Cree, Inc. (NASDAQ:CREE), The Mosaic Company (NYSE:MOS), Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:BILL), Lincoln National Corporation (NYSE:LNC), RPM International Inc. (NYSE:RPM), and Banco de Chile (NYSE:BCH). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to UHAL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| DAR | 33 | 756667 | -3 |
| CREE | 30 | 605496 | -3 |
| MOS | 38 | 944874 | -1 |
| BILL | 51 | 2411036 | -1 |
| LNC | 36 | 715298 | 0 |
| RPM | 20 | 79868 | -5 |
| BCH | 5 | 53333 | 2 |
| Average | 30.4 | 795225 | -1.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 30.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $795 million. That figure was $661 million in UHAL’s case. Bill.com Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:BILL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Banco de Chile (NYSE:BCH) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for UHAL is 51.2. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and surpassed the market again by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately UHAL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); UHAL investors were disappointed as the stock returned -6.9% since the end of March (through 7/16) 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.
Follow U-Haul Holding Co (NASDAQ:UHALB)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
