The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 867 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 4300 level. Since then investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound even though we experienced a temporary correction in January. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) was a good investment heading into the fourth quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.
Is Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) an outstanding investment today? Investors who are in the know were betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund bets improved by 3 recently. Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) was in 45 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 47. Our calculations also showed that CCI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 42 hedge funds in our database with CCI positions at the end of the second quarter.
Stuart Zimmer of Zimmer Partners
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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to analyze the new hedge fund action surrounding Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI).
Do Hedge Funds Think CCI Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At third quarter’s end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 7% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 42 hedge funds with a bullish position in CCI a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust held the most valuable stake in Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI), which was worth $791 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Fisher Asset Management which amassed $425.6 million worth of shares. D E Shaw, Millennium Management, and Renaissance Technologies 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 Skylands Capital allocated the biggest weight to Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI), around 5.88% of its 13F portfolio. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.41 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CCI.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, created the largest position in Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI). Renaissance Technologies had $99.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $56.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new CCI positions are Stuart J. Zimmer’s Zimmer Partners, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI). We will take a look at Chubb Limited (NYSE:CB), The Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS), The Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE:SHW), Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE:COF), Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV), Equinix Inc (NASDAQ:EQIX), and Becton, Dickinson and Company (NYSE:BDX). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble CCI’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CB | 30 | 1272774 | -12 |
| BNS | 17 | 193321 | 3 |
| SHW | 44 | 1576816 | -5 |
| COF | 55 | 4708790 | -9 |
| FISV | 65 | 3945223 | -7 |
| EQIX | 31 | 1195457 | -2 |
| BDX | 51 | 2339968 | -1 |
| Average | 41.9 | 2176050 | -4.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 41.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2176 million. That figure was $2089 million in CCI’s case. Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ:FISV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CCI is 65.9. 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 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CCI as the stock returned 6.1% since the end of Q3 (through 1/31) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
