As we already know from media reports and hedge fund investor letters, hedge funds delivered their best returns in a decade. Most investors who decided to stick with hedge funds after a rough 2018 recouped their losses by the end of the fourth quarter of 2019. A significant number of hedge funds continued their strong performance in 2020 and 2021 as well. We get to see hedge funds’ thoughts towards the market and individual stocks by aggregating their quarterly portfolio movements and reading their investor letters. In this article, we will particularly take a look at what hedge funds think about Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA).
Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) has experienced a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 28. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with SYNA holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that SYNA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint Capital
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. Now we’re going to analyze the latest hedge fund action encompassing Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA).
Do Hedge Funds Think SYNA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -15% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 23 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SYNA a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder of Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA), with a stake worth $195.9 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Fisher Asset Management was Trigran Investments, which amassed a stake valued at $86.4 million. Greenhouse Funds, Driehaus Capital, and D E Shaw 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 Trigran Investments allocated the biggest weight to Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA), around 9.53% of its 13F portfolio. Greenhouse Funds is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 5.57 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SYNA.
Seeing as Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) has faced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of funds that slashed their positions entirely heading into Q4. Intriguingly, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw said goodbye to the biggest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $233.5 million in stock. Jimmy Levin’s fund, Sculptor Capital, also sold off its stock, about $95.2 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds heading into Q4.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK), BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBIO), Post Holdings Inc (NYSE:POST), Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M), Casey’s General Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:CASY), Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA), and Woori Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:WF). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble SYNA’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| OSK | 31 | 263682 | 3 |
| BBIO | 28 | 2118607 | 1 |
| POST | 27 | 1433693 | -4 |
| M | 41 | 1478930 | 6 |
| CASY | 22 | 211044 | -2 |
| VOYA | 35 | 968117 | -9 |
| WF | 2 | 3608 | 0 |
| Average | 26.6 | 925383 | -0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $925 million. That figure was $493 million in SYNA’s case. Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Woori Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:WF) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Synaptics Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYNA) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SYNA is 52.6. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and still beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on SYNA as the stock returned 56.3% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
Follow Synaptics Inc (NASDAQ:SYNA)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
