Is Mondelez (MDLZ) Stock A Buy or Sell?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 887 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of December 31st, 2020. What do these smart investors think about Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ)?

Is MDLZ stock a buy or sell? Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 50 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. Our calculations also showed that MDLZ isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare MDLZ to other stocks including Mercadolibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI), The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX), and Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM) to get a better sense of its popularity.

Nelson Peltz of Trian Partners

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

At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 50 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 50 hedge funds with a bullish position in MDLZ a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ) was held by Trian Partners, which reported holding $715.8 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Diamond Hill Capital with a $489.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Hillhouse Capital Management, and Tremblant Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Trian Partners allocated the biggest weight to Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ), around 10.59% of its 13F portfolio. Tremblant Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.33 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MDLZ.

Judging by the fact that Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ) has experienced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there exists a select few hedge funds that decided to sell off their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Brian Scudieri’s Kehrs Ridge Capital dumped the biggest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $44.4 million in stock, and Louis Bacon’s Moore Global Investments was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $27.9 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ). These stocks are Mercadolibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI), The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX), Anthem Inc (NYSE:ANTM), Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW), S&P Global Inc. (NYSE:SPGI), Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), and Zoetis Inc (NYSE:ZTS). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MDLZ’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 66.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4829 million. That figure was $2626 million in MDLZ’s case. Mercadolibre Inc (NASDAQ:MELI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Snowflake Inc (NYSE:SNOW) is the least popular one with only 54 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Mondelez International Inc (NASDAQ:MDLZ) is even less popular than SNOW. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MDLZ is 26.7. 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 dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards MDLZ. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 5.3% in 2021 through March 19th but managed to beat the market again by 0.8 percentage points. Unfortunately MDLZ wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); MDLZ investors were disappointed as the stock returned -0.6% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 3/19) 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.

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