Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) based on that data.
Is SCOR a good stock to buy now? Hedge funds were becoming less confident. The number of long hedge fund bets dropped by 2 recently. comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) was in 13 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 30. Our calculations also showed that SCOR 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). There were 15 hedge funds in our database with SCOR positions at the end of the second quarter.
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Didric Cederholm of Lion Point 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a gander at the latest hedge fund action surrounding comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR).
Do Hedge Funds Think SCOR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -13% from the second quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 18 hedge funds with a bullish position in SCOR a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Tenzing Global Investors was the largest shareholder of comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR), with a stake worth $7.7 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Tenzing Global Investors was Starboard Value LP, which amassed a stake valued at $6.1 million. Royce & Associates, Clearline Capital, and Lion Point 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 Roumell Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR), around 7.4% of its 13F portfolio. Tenzing Global Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.43 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SCOR.
Due to the fact that comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) has experienced a decline in interest from the smart money, logic holds that there is a sect of fund managers that elected to cut their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Constantinos J. Christofilis’s Archon Capital Management said goodbye to the largest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $2.6 million in stock. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s fund, Arrowstreet Capital, also dumped its stock, about $0.1 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR). We will take a look at American Realty Investors, Inc. (NYSE:ARL), Bel Fuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:BELFA), Lyra Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:LYRA), Western New England Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:WNEB), First Internet Bancorp (NASDAQ:INBK), L.B. Foster Company (NASDAQ:FSTR), and Inmune Bio Inc. (NASDAQ:INMB). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to SCOR’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARL | 1 | 251 | 0 |
| BELFA | 4 | 4790 | 0 |
| LYRA | 6 | 53656 | -2 |
| WNEB | 3 | 12969 | -1 |
| INBK | 9 | 3929 | 1 |
| FSTR | 12 | 34741 | 0 |
| INMB | 3 | 4021 | 3 |
| Average | 5.4 | 16337 | 0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $16 million. That figure was $38 million in SCOR’s case. L.B. Foster Company (NASDAQ:FSTR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand American Realty Investors, Inc. (NYSE:ARL) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SCOR is 66. 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 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th but still managed to beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SCOR as the stock returned 21.1% since the end of September (through 12/8) 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
