Hedge Funds Are Souring On Hasbro, Inc. (HAS)

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 36. HAS investors should pay attention to a decrease in hedge fund interest recently. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with HAS positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that HAS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

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 let’s review the latest hedge fund action surrounding Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS).

Phillip Gross of Adage Capital

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -7% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in HAS over the last 25 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management has the largest position in Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS), worth close to $69.1 million, accounting for 1.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, which holds a $22 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other members of the smart money that are bullish include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Renaissance Technologies and Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Scopus Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS), around 1.17% of its 13F portfolio. Sirios Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.39 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HAS.

Because Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of fund managers who sold off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Michael Zimmerman’s Prentice Capital Management said goodbye to the biggest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, worth about $10.8 million in stock. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s fund, Marshall Wace LLP, also said goodbye to its stock, about $10.5 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) but similarly valued. These stocks are Tencent Music Entertainment Group (NYSE:TME), Mohawk Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MHK), GFL Environmental Inc. (NYSE:GFL), Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH), DaVita Inc (NYSE:DVA), Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY), and Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:JKHY). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to HAS’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1290 million. That figure was $185 million in HAS’s case. Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HAS is 40. 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 HAS as the stock returned 13.3% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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