Hedge Funds Started Cashing Out Of Anaplan, Inc. (PLAN)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 821 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, near the height of the coronavirus market crash. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) based on that data.

Is Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) a buy right now? The smart money is becoming less hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets were trimmed by 6 lately. Our calculations also showed that PLAN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). PLAN was in 51 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2020. There were 57 hedge funds in our database with PLAN positions at the end of the previous quarter.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

According to most market participants, hedge funds are seen as slow, old financial tools of years past. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at present, Our experts look at the moguls of this club, approximately 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people direct bulk of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by monitoring their first-class equity investments, Insider Monkey has found many investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Daniel Sundheim of D1 Capital Partners

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we are still not out of the woods in terms of the coronavirus pandemic. So, we checked out this successful trader’s “corona catalyst plays“. Also, Europe is set to become the world’s largest cannabis market, so we checked out this European marijuana stock pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN).

What does smart money think about Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 51 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -11% from the fourth quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in PLAN over the last 18 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) was held by Coatue Management, which reported holding $336.2 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Tiger Global Management LLC with a $205.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D1 Capital Partners, Melvin Capital Management, and Steadfast Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cowbird Capital allocated the biggest weight to Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN), around 6.88% of its 13F portfolio. HMI Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 6.39 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PLAN.

Since Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of hedgies that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Gregg Moskowitz’s Interval Partners dumped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at about $55.2 million in stock. Steve Cohen’s fund, Point72 Asset Management, also dumped its stock, about $31.8 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN). These stocks are Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX), Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV), Black Hills Corporation (NYSE:BKH), and Virtu Financial Inc (NASDAQ:VIRT). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to PLAN’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $371 million. That figure was $1608 million in PLAN’s case. Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 7.9% in 2020 through May 22nd but still managed to beat the market by 15.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on PLAN as the stock returned 68.7% so far in Q2 (through May 22nd) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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