At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 873 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of June 30th. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) makes for a good investment right now.
Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 29. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with GPC positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that GPC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors
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Do Hedge Funds Think GPC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 12% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GPC over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, GAMCO Investors, managed by Mario Gabelli, holds the number one position in Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC). GAMCO Investors has a $98.1 million position in the stock, comprising 0.8% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Jack Woodruff of Candlestick Capital Management, with a $68.5 million position; 1.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers with similar optimism encompass Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Renaissance Technologies. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Candlestick Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC), around 1.53% of its 13F portfolio. Navellier & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.08 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GPC.
As one would reasonably expect, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, assembled the largest position in Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC). Marshall Wace LLP had $6.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw also made a $3.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Ronald Hua’s Qtron Investments, Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC). These stocks are NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE:DPZ), NVR, Inc. (NYSE:NVR), Healthpeak Properties, Inc. (NYSE:PEAK), Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY), Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), and Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to GPC’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| NTAP | 31 | 437722 | 5 |
| DPZ | 31 | 2494688 | 2 |
| NVR | 28 | 1093288 | -11 |
| PEAK | 22 | 119796 | 4 |
| BSY | 17 | 81427 | -5 |
| BXP | 19 | 1397759 | -8 |
| FTCH | 63 | 4253088 | 6 |
| Average | 30.1 | 1411110 | -1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 30.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1411 million. That figure was $418 million in GPC’s case. Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GPC is 51. 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 24.9% in 2021 through October 15th and surpassed the market again by 4.5 percentage points. Unfortunately GPC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); GPC investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.2% since the end of June (through 10/15) 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
