We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) based on that data.
Is The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) worth your attention right now? Hedge funds were getting more optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions inched up by 3 recently. The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 38. Our calculations also showed that MAC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think MAC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 19% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in MAC over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) was held by Millennium Management, which reported holding $33.4 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by EJF Capital with a $21.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Maverick Capital, Marshall Wace LLP, and Renaissance Technologies. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position EJF Capital allocated the biggest weight to The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC), around 1.53% of its 13F portfolio. Third Avenue Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.25 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MAC.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. EJF Capital, managed by Emanuel J. Friedman, initiated the most valuable position in The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC). EJF Capital had $21.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital also initiated a $19.9 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new MAC investors: Renaissance Technologies, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, and John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC). We will take a look at Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE:EVA), Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NYSE:INO), Urban Edge Properties (NYSE:UE), The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA), CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI), Triumph Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:TBK), and PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust (NYSE:PMT). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble MAC’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| EVA | 7 | 250065 | -2 |
| INO | 11 | 53390 | -5 |
| UE | 12 | 95718 | 0 |
| NAPA | 18 | 96294 | 18 |
| CVI | 18 | 1436736 | -1 |
| TBK | 16 | 270615 | 4 |
| PMT | 8 | 15704 | -7 |
| Average | 12.9 | 316932 | 1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $317 million. That figure was $172 million in MAC’s case. The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE:EVA) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Macerich Company (NYSE:MAC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MAC is 73. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks returned 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th but still managed to beat the market by 7.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on MAC as the stock returned 45% since the end of March (through 7/16) 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.
Follow Macerich Co (NASDAQ:MAC)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
