Is MTW A Good Stock To Buy Now According To Hedge Funds?

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 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. What do these smart investors think about The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW)?

Is MTW a good stock to buy now? The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW) investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 28. There were 19 hedge funds in our database with MTW holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that MTW 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).

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

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 113% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points. Our short strategy outperformed the S&P 500 short ETFs by 20 percentage points annually (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint 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 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 review the key hedge fund action regarding The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW).

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

At the end of September, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from the second quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in MTW a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Firefly Value Partners held the most valuable stake in The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW), which was worth $5.9 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Rutabaga Capital Management which amassed $3.3 million worth of shares. Renaissance Technologies, Lodge Hill Capital, and Millennium Management 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 Firefly Value Partners allocated the biggest weight to The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW), around 9.83% of its 13F portfolio. Rutabaga Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.88 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MTW.

Now, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Southpoint Capital Advisors, managed by John Smith Clark, initiated the largest position in The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW). Southpoint Capital Advisors had $1.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners also made a $0.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, and Jonathan Soros’s JS Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW) but similarly valued. These stocks are Verona Pharma plc (NASDAQ:VRNA), Spero Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPRO), Kimball Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:KE), Casper Sleep Inc. (NYSE:CSPR), Genco Shipping & Trading Limited (NYSE:GNK), CURO Group Holdings Corp. (NYSE:CURO), and Cheetah Mobile Inc (NYSE:CMCM). This group of stocks’ market caps match MTW’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $60 million. That figure was $31 million in MTW’s case. Kimball Electronics Inc (NASDAQ:KE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cheetah Mobile Inc (NYSE:CMCM) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MTW is 79.5. 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 returned 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th but still managed to beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on MTW as the stock returned 51.2% since the end of September (through 12/14) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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