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. We have processed the filings of the more than 867 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their September 30th holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.
Is Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) a worthy stock to buy now? Money managers were in a bearish mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased by 4 in recent months. Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 30. Our calculations also showed that LEVI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 30 hedge funds in our database with LEVI positions at the end of the second quarter.
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. With all of this in mind we’re going to analyze the key hedge fund action surrounding Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI).
Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates
Do Hedge Funds Think LEVI Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -13% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 17 hedge funds with a bullish position in LEVI a year ago. So, let’s examine 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 Broad Bay Capital, which reported holding $43 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $27.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Millennium Management, and Select Equity 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 5.32% of its 13F portfolio. Venator Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.47 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LEVI.
Due to the fact that Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) has witnessed a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that elected to cut their positions entirely heading into Q4. Intriguingly, Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners cut the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $71.2 million in stock. Anand Parekh’s fund, Alyeska Investment Group, also said goodbye to its stock, about $32.3 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds heading into Q4.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI). We will take a look at Chegg Inc (NYSE:CHGG), Hubbell Incorporated (NYSE:HUBB), Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN), CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE), Penumbra Inc (NYSE:PEN), A. O. Smith Corporation (NYSE:AOS), and Manhattan Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:MANH). This group of stocks’ market caps match LEVI’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHGG | 39 | 514158 | 1 |
| HUBB | 18 | 571249 | 3 |
| WYNN | 32 | 282672 | -5 |
| CUBE | 22 | 225467 | 4 |
| PEN | 33 | 553799 | 3 |
| AOS | 29 | 564878 | 3 |
| MANH | 25 | 475224 | -3 |
| Average | 28.3 | 455350 | 0.9 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $455 million. That figure was $225 million in LEVI’s case. Chegg Inc (NYSE:CHGG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Hubbell Incorporated (NYSE:HUBB) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Levi Strauss & Co. (NYSE:LEVI) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LEVI is 46. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and surpassed the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately LEVI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); LEVI investors were disappointed as the stock returned 4.4% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 Levi Strauss & Co (NYSE:LEVI)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
