Is LNT Stock A Buy or Sell?

Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Is LNT stock a buy? Investors who are in the know were reducing their bets on the stock. The number of long hedge fund positions went down by 1 in recent months. Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 30. Our calculations also showed that LNT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we heard that billionaire Peter Thiel is backing this psychedelic-drug startup. So, we are taking a closer look at this space. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 to identify the next stock with 10x 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 let’s go over the recent hedge fund action surrounding Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT).

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

Heading into the first quarter of 2021, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -3% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 28 hedge funds with a bullish position in LNT a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $67.4 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Zimmer Partners with a $58 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included AQR Capital Management, ExodusPoint Capital, and D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Coann Capital allocated the biggest weight to Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT), around 5.55% of its 13F portfolio. Yaupon Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 2.71 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LNT.

Because Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of funds that slashed their full holdings heading into Q1. Interestingly, Renaissance Technologies cut the largest position of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $19.4 million in stock, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $8.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds heading into Q1.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT). These stocks are Erie Indemnity Company (NASDAQ:ERIE), Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS), Elastic N.V. (NYSE:ESTC), C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHRW), United Airlines Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UAL), Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE:BEN), and FactSet Research Systems Inc. (NYSE:FDS). This group of stocks’ market valuations match LNT’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 33.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $704 million. That figure was $276 million in LNT’s case. United Airlines Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UAL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Erie Indemnity Company (NASDAQ:ERIE) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Alliant Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:LNT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LNT is 57.4. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.2% in 2021 through April 12th and surpassed the market again by 1.5 percentage points. Unfortunately LNT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); LNT investors were disappointed as the stock returned 6.1% since the end of December (through 4/12) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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