Is UBA A Good Stock To Buy Now?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 817 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 September 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) based on that data.

Is UBA a good stock to buy now? Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) was in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 15. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that UBA 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).

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 has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 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 underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

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. With all of this in mind let’s review the key hedge fund action regarding Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA).

Do Hedge Funds Think UBA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 20% from the second quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards UBA over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA), which was worth $8.5 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Balyasny Asset Management which amassed $4.4 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and D E Shaw 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 Scion Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA), around 0.14% of its 13F portfolio. Balyasny Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to UBA.

As aggregate interest increased, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, assembled the most valuable position in Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA). Balyasny Asset Management had $4.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners also initiated a $1.4 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new UBA investors: Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRO), Insteel Industries Inc (NASDAQ:IIIN), Akebia Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AKBA), NextDecade Corporation (NASDAQ:NEXT), Crescent Capital BDC, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCAP), PDL BioPharma Inc. (NASDAQ:PDLI), and Interface, Inc. (NASDAQ:TILE). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to UBA’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $99 million. That figure was $29 million in UBA’s case. Sutro Biopharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:STRO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand NextDecade Corporation (NASDAQ:NEXT) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc (NYSE:UBA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for UBA is 74.1. 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 gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and still beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on UBA as the stock returned 58.9% since the end of Q3 (through 12/14) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.