The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI).
Is Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI) the right investment to pursue these days? Prominent investors are in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets swelled by 5 recently. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with PRI positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare PRI to other stocks including AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE:AMC), Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH), and Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow Primerica Inc. (NYSE:PRI)
Follow Primerica Inc. (NYSE:PRI)
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.
Tashatuvango/Shutterstock.com
Keeping this in mind, we’re going to analyze the latest action surrounding Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI).
What does the smart money think about Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 42% from the second quarter of 2016. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in PRI over the last 5 quarters. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Brave Warrior Capital, led by Glenn Greenberg, holds the most valuable position in Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI). Brave Warrior Capital has a $144.8 million position in the stock, comprising 7% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is William von Mueffling of Cantillon Capital Management, with a $58.6 million position; the fund has 0.8% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money with similar optimism comprise Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, John D. Gillespie’s Prospector Partners and Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies. 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.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, led by Jim Simons, assembled the most valuable position in Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI). Renaissance Technologies had $8.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management also made a $2.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new PRI investors: Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Andrew Feldstein and Stephen Siderow’s Blue Mountain Capital.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE:AMC), Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH), Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI), and Medidata Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:MDSO). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to PRI’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMC | 15 | 133907 | -1 |
| CHH | 15 | 110466 | 7 |
| IDTI | 25 | 311391 | -1 |
| MDSO | 16 | 83886 | 7 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $160 million. That figure was $257 million in PRI’s case. Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDTI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE:AMC) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard IDTI might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Suggested Articles:
Countries With Highest Teacher Salaries
Best VR Headsets To Buy For iPhone
Countries With The Highest Teenage Pregnancy Rates
Disclosure: None
