Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR)

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the second quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30th. 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 Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR).

Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR) has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR) was in 32 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 38. Our calculations also showed that FOUR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

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. Now we’re going to view the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 32 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 3% from the second quarter of 2021. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards FOUR over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR) was held by Southpoint Capital Advisors, which reported holding $124 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Senator Investment Group with a $93 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Point72 Asset Management, Millennium Management, and Kerrisdale Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Nishkama Capital allocated the biggest weight to Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR), around 6.15% of its 13F portfolio. Hickory Lane Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.16 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FOUR.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Maplelane Capital, managed by Leon Shaulov, assembled the biggest position in Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR). Maplelane Capital had $29.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mikal Patel’s Oribel Capital Management also initiated a $13.8 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new FOUR positions are Leon Shaulov’s Maplelane Capital, Allon Hellmann’s Full18 Capital, and Ira Unschuld’s Brant Point Investment Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR). These stocks are Coty Inc (NYSE:COTY), MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ), Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT), KT Corporation (NYSE:KT), Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXST), Texas Roadhouse Inc (NASDAQ:TXRH), and VCA Antech Inc (NASDAQ:WOOF). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to FOUR’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 25.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $481 million. That figure was $628 million in FOUR’s case. Coty Inc (NYSE:COTY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FOUR is 70.2. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately FOUR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on FOUR were disappointed as the stock returned -32.9% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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.

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