Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (PPC)

The elite funds run by legendary investors such as Dan Loeb and David Tepper make hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves and their investors by spending enormous resources doing research on small cap stocks that big investment banks don’t follow. Because of their pay structures, they have strong incentive to do the research necessary to beat the market. That’s why we pay close attention to what they think in small cap stocks. In this article, we take a closer look at Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC) from the perspective of those elite funds.

Is Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC) ready to rally soon? Investors who are in the know are getting more bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions inched up by 1 in recent months. PPC was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with PPC holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALGN), CIT Group Inc. (NYSE:CIT), and Lamar Advertising Co (NASDAQ:LAMR) to gather more data points.

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How are hedge funds trading Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 5% uptick from one quarter earlier. Hedge fund ownership of the stock has slowly rebounded after a huge Q1 drop. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, holds the number one position in Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC). Renaissance Technologies has a $56.3 million position in the stock. The second most bullish fund manager is AQR Capital Management, managed by Cliff Asness, which holds a $54.2 million position. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of D E Shaw, founded by David E. Shaw, as well as Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.