After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of June 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV).
Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) was in 72 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 94. FISV shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. There were 75 hedge funds in our database with FISV holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that FISV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Michael Lowenstein of Kensico Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think FISV Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of June, a total of 72 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -4% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards FISV 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.
The largest stake in Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) was held by BlueSpruce Investments, which reported holding $715.3 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Kensico Capital with a $254.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Point State Capital, and Omega Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position BlueSpruce Investments allocated the biggest weight to Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV), around 13.04% of its 13F portfolio. Columbus Point is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 10.41 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FISV.
Seeing as Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers that elected to cut their positions entirely heading into Q3. At the top of the heap, Robert Pitts’s Steadfast Capital Management dropped the biggest investment of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $148.3 million in stock, and Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $102.4 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds heading into Q3.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) but similarly valued. These stocks are Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX), Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW), Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF), Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN), Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR), Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL), and The Blackstone Group Inc. (NYSE:BX). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to FISV’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BDX | 52 | 3335441 | -13 |
| ITW | 45 | 657608 | 12 |
| COF | 64 | 4053972 | 5 |
| ILMN | 51 | 1973287 | -1 |
| EQNR | 11 | 88633 | 3 |
| CL | 58 | 2368869 | 10 |
| BX | 54 | 2080104 | 5 |
| Average | 47.9 | 2079702 | 3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 47.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2080 million. That figure was $2655 million in FISV’s case. Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FISV is 75. 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 24.1% in 2021 through September 20th and still beat the market by 6.9 percentage points. Unfortunately FISV wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on FISV were disappointed as the stock returned 0.4% since the end of the second quarter (through 9/20) 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 since 2019.
Follow Fiserv Inc (NASDAQ:FI)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
