Hedge Funds Are Selling LivePerson, Inc. (LPSN)

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 866 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN).

LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 35. LPSN investors should be aware of a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. There were 35 hedge funds in our database with LPSN holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that LPSN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. 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 review the key hedge fund action encompassing LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN).

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

At Q1’s end, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -11% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LPSN over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Polar Capital was the largest shareholder of LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN), with a stake worth $55 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Polar Capital was Two Sigma Advisors, which amassed a stake valued at $17.5 million. Citadel Investment Group, Sphera Global Healthcare Fund, and G2 Investment Partners Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Provenire Capital allocated the biggest weight to LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN), around 3.84% of its 13F portfolio. G2 Investment Partners Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.95 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LPSN.

Due to the fact that LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN) has faced a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there is a sect of fund managers who sold off their positions entirely heading into Q2. Intriguingly, Josh Resnick’s Jericho Capital Asset Management sold off the largest investment of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, worth about $50.8 million in stock. Doug Gordon, Jon Hilsabeck and Don Jabro’s fund, Shellback Capital, also cut its stock, about $19.6 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN) but similarly valued. These stocks are ChemoCentryx Inc (NASDAQ:CCXI), National Vision Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EYE), Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR), PotlatchDeltic Corporation (NASDAQ:PCH), Equitrans Midstream Corporation (NYSE:ETRN), Applied Industrial Technologies Inc (NYSE:AIT), and Diodes Incorporated (NASDAQ:DIOD). This group of stocks’ market valuations match LPSN’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $326 million. That figure was $194 million in LPSN’s case. Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ChemoCentryx Inc (NASDAQ:CCXI) is the least popular one with only 20 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LPSN is 77.6. 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 22.8% in 2021 through July 2nd and still managed to beat the market by 6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on LPSN, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 16.1% since the end of March (through July 2nd) and outperformed the market as well.

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