Is MTZ A Good Stock To Buy 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. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ).

Is MTZ a good stock to buy? The smart money was getting more bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions increased by 6 recently. MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ) was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 41. Our calculations also showed that MTZ 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.

Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the House passed a landmark bill decriminalizing marijuana. So, we are checking out this under the radar cannabis stock right now. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to buy 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to review the key hedge fund action surrounding MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 21% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MTZ over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, AQR Capital Management held the most valuable stake in MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ), which was worth $25 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $17.7 million worth of shares. Peconic Partners LLC, Lodge Hill Capital, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Lodge Hill Capital allocated the biggest weight to MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ), around 4.09% of its 13F portfolio. Peconic Partners LLC is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.93 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MTZ.

Now, key hedge funds have jumped into MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ) headfirst. Peconic Partners LLC, managed by William Harnisch, created the most valuable position in MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ). Peconic Partners LLC had $16.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management also made a $11.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Gregg Moskowitz’s Interval Partners, and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Overstock.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSTK), Covetrus, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVET), Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (NYSE:BVN), SVMK Inc. (NASDAQ:SVMK), JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ:JBLU), Fox Factory Holding Corp (NASDAQ:FOXF), and Selective Insurance Group (NASDAQ:SIGI). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to MTZ’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $181 million. That figure was $156 million in MTZ’s case. SVMK Inc. (NASDAQ:SVMK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (NYSE:BVN) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MTZ is 85.6. 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 33.3% in 2020 through December 18th but still managed to beat the market by 16.4 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on MTZ as the stock returned 56.6% since the end of September (through 12/18) 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.