Here is What Hedge Funds Think About AptarGroup, Inc. (ATR)

Most investors tend to think that hedge funds and other asset managers are worthless, as they cannot beat even simple index fund portfolios. In fact, most people expect hedge funds to compete with and outperform the bull market that we have witnessed in recent years. However, hedge funds are generally partially hedged and aim at delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns rather than following the ups and downs of equity markets hoping that they will outperform the broader market. Our research shows that certain hedge funds do have great stock picking skills (and we can identify these hedge funds in advance pretty accurately), so let’s take a glance at the smart money sentiment towards AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR).

AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that ATR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare ATR to other stocks including Cosan S.A. (NYSE:CSAN), Rexnord Corp (NYSE:RXN), and TuSimple Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:TSP) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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 take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR).

Tim Woolley of Polar Capital

Do Hedge Funds Think ATR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At Q3’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 28 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in ATR a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Rivulet Capital held the most valuable stake in AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR), which was worth $142.8 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Hawk Ridge Management which amassed $67.3 million worth of shares. Polar Capital, D E Shaw, and Citadel Investment Group were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Rivulet Capital allocated the biggest weight to AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR), around 7.45% of its 13F portfolio. Hawk Ridge Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 4.32 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATR.

Seeing as AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there was a specific group of fund managers who were dropping their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management dumped the largest position of the 750 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising about $21.8 million in stock. Renaissance Technologies, also dropped its stock, about $8.1 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR). We will take a look at Cosan S.A. (NYSE:CSAN), Rexnord Corp (NYSE:RXN), TuSimple Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:TSP), Avis Budget Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CAR), Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc (NYSE:HII), Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN), and EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to ATR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $924 million. That figure was $344 million in ATR’s case. EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cosan S.A. (NYSE:CSAN) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATR is 55.1. 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 positive signal but 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 beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately ATR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ATR were disappointed as the stock returned 0.4% 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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