The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. What do these smart investors think about Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV)?
Is ABEV a good stock to buy now? Prominent investors were becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 8 recently. Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 24. Our calculations also showed that ABEV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Today there are a lot of gauges stock market investors can use to analyze their stock investments. Two of the best gauges are hedge fund and insider trading moves. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best money managers can outpace the broader indices by a superb margin (see the details here).
Richard S. Pzena of Pzena Investment Management
At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the new hedge fund action surrounding Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV).
Do Hedge Funds Think ABEV Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q3’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 62% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ABEV over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Ako Capital held the most valuable stake in Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV), which was worth $111.9 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Renaissance Technologies which amassed $59.5 million worth of shares. Orbis Investment Management, Citadel Investment Group, and Columbus Hill Capital Management 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 Columbus Hill Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV), around 3.63% of its 13F portfolio. Solel Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.81 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ABEV.
With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers have jumped into Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV) headfirst. Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, created the biggest position in Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV). Fisher Asset Management had $4.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard S. Pzena’s Pzena Investment Management also made a $1.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ABEV investors: Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV). These stocks are Vodafone Group Plc (NASDAQ:VOD), Twilio Inc. (NYSE:TWLO), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS), Southern Copper Corporation (NYSE:SCCO), and Dow Inc. (NYSE:DOW). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to ABEV’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| VOD | 22 | 677025 | 6 |
| TWLO | 71 | 3474887 | 5 |
| COP | 45 | 828871 | 1 |
| TWTR | 75 | 2151017 | 7 |
| CTAS | 38 | 741729 | 4 |
| SCCO | 27 | 347458 | 8 |
| DOW | 42 | 512456 | 7 |
| Average | 45.7 | 1247635 | 5.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 45.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1248 million. That figure was $348 million in ABEV’s case. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Vodafone Group Plc (NASDAQ:VOD) is the least popular one with only 22 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV) is even less popular than VOD. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ABEV is 36.3. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on ABEV as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and still beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ABEV as the stock returned 33.6% since Q3 (through December 14th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
Follow Ambev S.a. (NYSE:ABEV)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
