Insider Monkey finished processing more than 700 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of December 31st, 2018. What do these smart investors think about Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP)?
Is Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Money managers are becoming less hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets fell by 6 lately. Our calculations also showed that rhp isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s flagship best performing hedge funds strategy returned 20.7% year to date (through March 12th) and outperformed the market even though it draws its stock picks among small-cap stocks. This strategy also outperformed the market by 32 percentage points since its inception (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Let’s view the key hedge fund action encompassing Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP).
How have hedgies been trading Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP)?
Heading into the first quarter of 2019, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -25% from the second quarter of 2018. By comparison, 19 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in RHP a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) was held by GAMCO Investors, which reported holding $184.6 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Water Street Capital with a $48.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, GLG Partners, and Citadel Investment Group.
Because Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) has witnessed a decline in interest from the smart money, we can see that there exists a select few funds that slashed their full holdings heading into Q3. It’s worth mentioning that Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management cut the biggest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $19.5 million in stock, and Charles Davidson and Joseph Jacobs’s Wexford Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $4.9 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds heading into Q3.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Penske Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:PAG), American National Insurance Company (NASDAQ:ANAT), J2 Global Inc (NASDAQ:JCOM), and Laureate Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAUR). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to RHP’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PAG | 23 | 97186 | 3 |
| ANAT | 15 | 37536 | 2 |
| JCOM | 17 | 203141 | 0 |
| LAUR | 24 | 273657 | 4 |
| Average | 19.75 | 152880 | 2.25 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $153 million. That figure was $407 million in RHP’s case. Laureate Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAUR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand American National Insurance Company (NASDAQ:ANAT) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our calculations showed that top 15 most popular stocks) among hedge funds returned 24.2% through April 22nd and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 7 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on RHP, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 19.6% and outperformed the market as well.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
