Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of June. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 750 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.
Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. BLKB shareholders have witnessed an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with BLKB holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that BLKB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).
Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Today there are a large number of metrics market participants employ to value stocks. A duo of the less utilized metrics are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can trounce the S&P 500 by a solid amount (see the details here).
Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Asset Management
We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Europe is set to become the world’s largest cannabis market, so we check out this European marijuana stock pitch. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, “I’m investing more today than I did back in early 2009.” So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We also rely on the best performing hedge funds‘ buy/sell signals. Let’s take a gander at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB).
How have hedgies been trading Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 20% from the second quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BLKB over the last 17 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Echo Street Capital Management was the largest shareholder of Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB), with a stake worth $51 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Echo Street Capital Management was Citadel Investment Group, which amassed a stake valued at $5.7 million. D E Shaw, Gotham Asset Management, and Millennium Management 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 Echo Street Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB), around 0.87% of its 13F portfolio. Gotham Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BLKB.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds have jumped into Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) headfirst. Paloma Partners, managed by Donald Sussman, assembled the biggest position in Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB). Paloma Partners had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) but similarly valued. We will take a look at J2 Global Inc (NASDAQ:JCOM), Spire Inc. (NYSE:SR), CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI), and Envista Holdings Corporation (NYSE:NVST). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble BLKB’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| JCOM | 18 | 280780 | -6 |
| SR | 13 | 80974 | 1 |
| CVI | 26 | 3273232 | 7 |
| NVST | 21 | 255475 | 21 |
| Average | 19.5 | 972615 | 5.75 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $973 million. That figure was $73 million in BLKB’s case. CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Spire Inc. (NYSE:SR) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) is even less popular than SR. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards BLKB. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately BLKB wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); BLKB investors were disappointed as the stock returned -8.1% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) 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 so far in Q4.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
