Is Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.
Is Match (MTCH) stock a buy or sell? Investors who are in the know were buying. The number of long hedge fund positions went up by 11 in recent months. Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) was in 72 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 61. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that MTCH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 61 hedge funds in our database with MTCH positions at the end of the third quarter.
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John Armitage of Egerton Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think MTCH Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of December, a total of 72 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 18% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 32 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in MTCH a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Lone Pine Capital has the biggest position in Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH), worth close to $796.3 million, amounting to 2.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by John Armitage of Egerton Capital Limited, with a $491.7 million position; 2.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that hold long positions encompass Alex Sacerdote’s Whale Rock Capital Management, Eashwar Krishnan’s Tybourne Capital Management and Gabriel Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Portsea Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH), around 32.09% of its 13F portfolio. ShawSpring Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 16.53 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MTCH.
As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Whale Rock Capital Management, managed by Alex Sacerdote, created the biggest position in Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH). Whale Rock Capital Management had $370.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Gabriel Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management also initiated a $170.8 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new MTCH positions are Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital, and Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) but similarly valued. These stocks are Rocket Companies, Inc. (NYSE:RKT), TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE:TEL), KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC), Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) (NASDAQ:ERIC), L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LHX), Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS), and Amphenol Corporation (NYSE:APH). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to MTCH’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| RKT | 16 | 222897 | -6 |
| TEL | 39 | 2164724 | 6 |
| KLAC | 36 | 925910 | 3 |
| ERIC | 20 | 210745 | -3 |
| LHX | 37 | 890624 | -5 |
| SNPS | 40 | 1685180 | 8 |
| APH | 41 | 1049030 | -8 |
| Average | 32.7 | 1021301 | -0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1021 million. That figure was $3781 million in MTCH’s case. Amphenol Corporation (NYSE:APH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Rocket Companies, Inc. (NYSE:RKT) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Match Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:MTCH) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MTCH is 90. 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 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 7% in 2021 through March 12th and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately MTCH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MTCH were disappointed as the stock returned 1.4% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 3/12) 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 since 2019.
Follow Match Group Holdings Ii (Old) (NASDAQ:MTCH)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
