How Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD) Stacks Up Against Its Peers

Is Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD) a good stock to buy right now? We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before doing days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more resources than the average investor. The funds have access to expert networks and get tips from industry insiders. They also have numerous Ivy League graduates and MBAs. Like everyone else, hedge funds perform miserably at times, but their consensus picks have historically outperformed the market after risk adjustments. More recently the top 30 mid-cap stocks (market caps between $1 billion and $10 billion) among hedge funds delivered an average return of 18% during the last four quarters (S&P 500 Index funds returned only 7.6% during the same period).

Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. EXPD was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with EXPD holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare EXPD to other stocks including Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB), Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc (NYSE:FBHS), and CBRE Group Inc (NYSE:CBG) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

stockphoto mania/Shutterstock.com

Hedge fund activity in Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a 5% rise from the previous quarter. Hedge fund ownership of EXPD has trended down slightly over the past year, though remaining in a narrow range. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Robert Joseph Caruso’s Select Equity Group has the biggest position in Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD), worth close to $248.9 million, amounting to 2.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is International Value Advisers, managed by Charles de Vaulx, which holds a $127.5 million position; the fund has 3.8% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism contain Douglas Dossey and Arthur Young’s Tensile Capital, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management.

Consequently, some big names have jumped into Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD) headfirst. Echo Street Capital Management, managed by Greg Poole, created the most valuable position in Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD). Echo Street Capital Management had $5.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $2.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Peter Muller’s PDT Partners, Brian Taylor’s Pine River Capital Management, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD). These stocks are Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB), Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc (NYSE:FBHS), CBRE Group Inc (NYSE:CBG), and ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD). This group of stocks’ market caps match EXPD’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $828 million. That figure was $582 million in EXPD’s case. Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ResMed Inc. (NYSE:RMD) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Expeditors International of Washington (NASDAQ:EXPD) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds love. In this regard ALB might be a better candidate to consider a long position in.

Disclosure: None