Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Atento SA (ATTO)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. What do these smart investors think about Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO)?

Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 13. Our calculations also showed that ATTO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

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

To the average investor there are several formulas market participants employ to size up their stock investments. A duo of the most innovative formulas are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can outpace the broader indices by a significant margin (see the details here).

Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the recent hedge fund action regarding Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO).

How are hedge funds trading Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO)?

At the end of September, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -17% from the second quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ATTO over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Farallon Capital held the most valuable stake in Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO), which was worth $12 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Plaisance Capital which amassed $0.6 million worth of shares. Royce & Associates, Arrowstreet Capital, 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 Plaisance Capital allocated the biggest weight to Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO), around 1.04% of its 13F portfolio. Farallon Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.09 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATTO.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Two Sigma Advisors. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because none of the 750+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified ATTO as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO) but similarly valued. These stocks are Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC), Alithya Group inc. (NASDAQ:ALYA), Auburn National Bancorporation, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUBN), First Savings Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSFG), SharpSpring, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHSP), Airgain, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIRG), and Zovio Inc. (NASDAQ:ZVO). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble ATTO’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $15 million. That figure was $13 million in ATTO’s case. Zovio Inc. (NASDAQ:ZVO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Auburn National Bancorporation, Inc. (NASDAQ:AUBN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Atento SA (NYSE:ATTO) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATTO is 37.8. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ATTO as the stock returned 14.7% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/27) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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