Is CRH A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks aren’t doing great but many of the stocks that delivered strong returns since March are still going very strong and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment to CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH) changed recently.

Is CRH a good stock to buy now? CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that CRH 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). At the end of this article we will also compare CRH to other stocks including Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc (NYSE:ZBH), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT), and ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Peter Rathjens of Arrowstreet Capital

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 5 best cheap stocks to buy according to Ray Dalio to identify stocks with upside potential. 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. Now we’re going to take a look at the recent hedge fund action regarding CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH).

What have hedge funds been doing with CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CRH 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 CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH), with a stake worth $54.6 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Renaissance Technologies was Two Sigma Advisors, which amassed a stake valued at $2.7 million. Balyasny Asset Management, Millennium Management, and Quantamental 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 Quantamental Technologies allocated the biggest weight to CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH), around 0.47% of its 13F portfolio. Stevens Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRH.

Since CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH) has faced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies that slashed their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Thomas E. Claugus’s GMT Capital cut the biggest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $3.2 million in stock, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $0.4 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH). We will take a look at Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc (NYSE:ZBH), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT), ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS), Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE:KMI), Alcon Inc. (NYSE:ALC), and Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (NYSE:PEG). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble CRH’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $778 million. That figure was $62 million in CRH’s case. Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc (NYSE:ZBH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. CRH PLC (NYSE:CRH) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRH is 28. 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 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 31.6% in 2020 through December 2nd and still beat the market by 16 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CRH as the stock returned 11.3% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/2) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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