The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of nearly 750 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) based on those filings.
Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. AYX was in 44 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 38 hedge funds in our database with AYX positions at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that AYX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings, see the video below for Q2 rankings).
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
In today’s marketplace there are a multitude of signals stock traders can use to value stocks. A couple of the most underrated signals are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best investment managers can trounce the S&P 500 by a very impressive margin (see the details here).
Colin Moran of Abdiel Capital
Unlike the largest US hedge funds that are convinced Dow will soar past 40,000 or the world’s most bearish hedge fund that’s more convinced than ever that a crash is coming, our long-short investment strategy doesn’t rely on bull or bear markets to deliver double digit returns. We only rely on the best performing hedge funds‘ buy/sell signals. We’re going to take a look at the recent hedge fund action encompassing Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX).
How have hedgies been trading Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2019, a total of 44 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 16% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards AYX over the last 17 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) was held by Abdiel Capital Advisors, which reported holding $431.2 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Whale Rock Capital Management with a $228.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Alkeon Capital Management, Center Lake Capital, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Center Lake Capital allocated the biggest weight to Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX), around 41.87% of its portfolio. Abdiel Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 26.48 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AYX.
As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, established the most valuable call position in Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX). Point72 Asset Management had $10.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management also initiated a $9.7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, and Larry Chen and Terry Zhang’s Tairen Capital.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) but similarly valued. These stocks are Catalent Inc (NYSE:CTLT), TIM Participacoes SA (NYSE:TSU), Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. (NYSE:CDAY), and Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to AYX’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTLT | 27 | 392969 | 7 |
| TSU | 13 | 290605 | 1 |
| CDAY | 28 | 1115679 | 6 |
| ALV | 14 | 627166 | 1 |
| Average | 20.5 | 606605 | 3.75 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $607 million. That figure was $1334 million in AYX’s case. Ceridian HCM Holding Inc. (NYSE:CDAY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TIM Participacoes SA (NYSE:TSU) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Alteryx, Inc. (NYSE:AYX) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 34.7% in 2019 through November 22nd and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 8.5 percentage points. Unfortunately AYX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on AYX were disappointed as the stock returned -1.9% during the fourth quarter (through 11/22) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market in Q4.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
