Is WCN Stock A Buy or Sell?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 887 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their December 31st holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Is WCN stock a buy? Prominent investors were taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund bets moved up by 3 lately. Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 39. Our calculations also showed that WCN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 32 hedge funds in our database with WCN positions at the end of the third quarter.

Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the House passed a landmark bill decriminalizing marijuana. So, we are checking out this under the radar cannabis stock right now. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to buy to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. 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. Now we’re going to take a gander at the key hedge fund action surrounding Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN).

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

Heading into the first quarter of 2021, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 9% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 37 hedge funds with a bullish position in WCN a year ago. 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 Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $132.7 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Echo Street Capital Management with a $82 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, D E Shaw, and Galibier Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Galibier Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN), around 6.93% of its 13F portfolio. Brasada Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.84 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to WCN.

There weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions in the stock during the fourth quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN). These stocks are Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC), Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZS), Ecopetrol S.A. (NYSE:EC), Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR), Paycom Software Inc (NYSE:PAYC), Sun Life Financial Inc. (NYSE:SLF), and Li Auto Inc. (NASDAQ:LI). This group of stocks’ market values match WCN’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $805 million. That figure was $627 million in WCN’s case. Marathon Petroleum Corp (NYSE:MPC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Ecopetrol S.A. (NYSE:EC) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for WCN is 73.8. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st and beat the market again by 0.4 percentage points. Unfortunately WCN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on WCN were disappointed as the stock returned 6.9% since the end of December (through 4/1) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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