Is Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NCLH) A Better Stock Than Its Peers?

The worries about the election and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases have been keeping investors on the sidelines. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers have been underperforming main stock market indices since the middle of 2015. Interestingly though, smaller-cap stocks registered their best performance relative to the large-capitalization stocks since the end of the June quarter, suggesting that this may be the best time to take a cue from their stock picks. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index gained more than 15% since the beginning of the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark returned less than 6%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH) .

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH) has seen a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds in recent months. NCLH was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with NCLH holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare NCLH to other stocks including Amdocs Limited (NYSE:DOX), Cencosud SA (NYSE:CNCO), and Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc (NYSE:ARE) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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With all of this in mind, let’s check out the new action regarding Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH).

How have hedgies been trading Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -12% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in NCLH over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group has the number one position in Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH), worth close to $57 million, amounting to 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Marianas Fund Management, led by Will Snellings, holding a $26.6 million position; the fund has 6.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism include Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Brett Barakett’s Tremblant Capital and Richard Barrera’s Roystone Capital Partners. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that cut their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. Interestingly, Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management cut the biggest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $7.7 million in stock, and George Hall’s Clinton Group was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $6.6 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH). We will take a look at Amdocs Limited (NYSE:DOX), Cencosud SA (NYSE:CNCO), Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc (NYSE:ARE), and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NASDAQ:GT). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to NCLH’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $593 million. That figure was $190 million in NCLH’s case. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NASDAQ:GT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cencosud SA (NYSE:CNCO) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ:NCLH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard GT might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.