Is The New York Times Co (NYT) A Good Stock To Buy?

Billionaire hedge fund managers such as Steve Cohen and Stan Druckenmiller can generate millions or even billions of dollars every year by pinning down high-potential small-cap stocks and pouring cash into these candidates. Small-cap stocks are overlooked by most investors, brokerage houses, and financial services hubs, while the unlimited research abilities of the big players within the hedge fund industry can easily identify the undervalued and high-potential stocks that reside the ignored corners of equity markets. There are numerous small-cap stocks that have turned out to be great winners, which is one of the main reasons the Insider Monkey team pays close attention to the hedge fund activity in relation to these stocks.

Is New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) a healthy stock for your portfolio? The smart money is getting more bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions went up by 1 lately. At the end of this article we will also compare NYT to other stocks including Parkway Properties Inc (NYSE:PKY), Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR), and Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) 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.

Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com

Now, let’s take a look at the recent action encompassing New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT).

How have hedgies been trading New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, up 5% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, JHL Capital Group, managed by James H. Litinsky, holds the largest position in New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT). According to regulatory filings, the fund has a $111.7 million position in the stock, comprising 7.3% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Irving Kahn of Kahn Brothers, with a $44.7 million position; 8.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of Daniel Gold’s QVT Financial, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds have jumped into New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) headfirst. Radix Partners, managed by Joshua Packwood and Schuster Tanger, created the biggest position in New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT). The fund reportedly had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management also initiated a $0.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Parkway Properties Inc (NYSE:PKY), Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR), Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC), and Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp (NYSE:VAC). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to NYT’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $123 million. That figure was $263 million in NYT’s case. Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp (NYSE:VAC) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.

Disclosure: none.