Here is What Hedge Funds Think About CubeSmart (CUBE)

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE).

CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest lately. CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) was in 25 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 27. There were 24 hedge funds in our database with CUBE positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that CUBE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. With all of this in mind let’s analyze the new hedge fund action regarding CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 25 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 4% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 18 hedge funds with a bullish position in CUBE a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) was held by Diamond Hill Capital, which reported holding $147.4 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Zimmer Partners with a $91.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, Impax Asset Management, and Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hill Winds Capital allocated the biggest weight to CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE), around 1.87% of its 13F portfolio. Zimmer Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CUBE.

As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers have jumped into CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) headfirst. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, established the largest position in CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE). Point72 Asset Management had $3.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners also made a $0.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CUBE positions are Andrew Weiss’s Weiss Asset Management, Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Prelude Capital (previously Springbok Capital), and Minhua Zhang’s Weld Capital Management.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) but similarly valued. These stocks are Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:JEF), PVH Corp (NYSE:PVH), InVitae Corporation (NYSE:NVTA), Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (NYSE:COG), JOYY Inc. (NASDAQ:YY), Manhattan Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:MANH), and Thor Industries, Inc. (NYSE:THO). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to CUBE’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $805 million. That figure was $351 million in CUBE’s case. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:JEF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation (NYSE:COG) is the least popular one with only 20 bullish hedge fund positions. CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CUBE is 47.7. 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 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and still beat the market by 6.7 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CUBE as the stock returned 29.2% since the end of the first quarter (through 7/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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