Is J. Jill, Inc. (JILL) A Good Stock To Buy?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million 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 March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL) based on those filings.

Is JILL a good stock to buy? J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 12. Our calculations also showed that JILL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $29 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL).

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

At the end of March, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 100% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JILL over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the biggest position in J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL), worth close to $5.9 million, corresponding to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies, with a $4.3 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining peers with similar optimism include Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Royce & Associates allocated the biggest weight to J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL), around 0.04% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JILL.

Consequently, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, established the most outsized position in J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL). Royce & Associates had $5.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL). These stocks are Diffusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:DFFN), Core Molding Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:CMT), Sino-Global Shipping America, Ltd. (NASDAQ:SINO), Acasti Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:ACST), Document Security Systems, Inc. (NYSE:DSS), SilverBow Resorces, Inc. (NYSE:SBOW), and Cortland Bancorp (NASDAQ:CLDB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to JILL’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 2.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $9 million. That figure was $11 million in JILL’s case. SilverBow Resorces, Inc. (NYSE:SBOW) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sino-Global Shipping America, Ltd. (NASDAQ:SINO) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. J. Jill, Inc. (NYSE:JILL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JILL is 67. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on JILL as the stock returned 125.6% since the end of Q1 (through 6/11) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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