Is ASR A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th, about a month before the elections. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 817 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) based on those filings.

Is ASR a good stock to buy now? Investors who are in the know were becoming less hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets retreated by 1 in recent months. Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 11. Our calculations also showed that ASR 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.

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, old financial vehicles of the past. While there are over 8000 funds in operation today, Our experts look at the top tier of this club, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers orchestrate most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by keeping an eye on their inimitable investments, Insider Monkey has brought to light several investment strategies that have historically outpaced the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners

With all of this in mind we’re going to check out the recent hedge fund action regarding Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -9% from the second quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ASR over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder of Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR), with a stake worth $27.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Renaissance Technologies was Arrowstreet Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $8.5 million. Voss Capital, Southpoint Capital Advisors, and AQR 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 Voss Capital allocated the biggest weight to Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR), around 4.22% of its 13F portfolio. Southpoint Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ASR.

Seeing as Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) has witnessed a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few fund managers that elected to cut their positions entirely in the third quarter. Intriguingly, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP cut the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $3.3 million in stock, and Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $2.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Spirit Realty Capital Inc (NYSE:SRC), Fate Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FATE), Endava plc (NYSE:DAVA), Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ), Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE:SF), Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX), and Proto Labs Inc (NYSE:PRLB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to ASR’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $307 million. That figure was $51 million in ASR’s case. Fate Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FATE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Endava plc (NYSE:DAVA) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S. A. B. de C. V. (NYSE:ASR) is even less popular than DAVA. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ASR is 31.3. 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 ASR 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 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on ASR as the stock returned 32.2% since Q3 (through December 8th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.