Larry Robbins’ Glenview Boosts Stake in Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (HTZ); Is the Stock Set to Rebound?

Larry Robbins’ Glenview Capital has disclosed ownership of 23.75 million shares of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTZ) via a 13G filing with the SEC, which represent 5.20% of the company’s outstanding common stock. This yields an increase of 6.13 million shares from the position revealed in Glenview’s latest 13F filing, which eventually displays Glenview Capital’s confidence in the future outlook of the company.

Glenview Capital, one of the most prominent event-driven hedge funds, was established by Larry Robbins back in 2001. Glenview Capital is widely-known as a friendly activist investor, primarily seeking to engage in constructing and active dialogue with companies’ management so as to unlock shareholder value. According to the fund’s most recent 13F filing, Glenview Capital manages an equity portfolio worth $25.25 billion as of June 30.

We follow hedge funds like Glenview Capital because our research has shown that their stock picks can help retail investors to generate alpha even though their 13F filings are delayed by up to 45 days. We used a 60-day delay in our backtests to be on the safe side and they showed that the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index by an average of 95 basis points per month between 1999 and 2012. After adjusting for risk, our calculations revealed that these stocks’ monthly alpha was 80 basis points. We have also been sharing and tracking the performance of these stocks since the end of August 2012, during which time they have returned 118%, outperforming the S&P 500 ETF by nearly 61 percentage points (see more details here).

Let’s now move on to Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTZ) and Larry Robbins’ latest move regarding the company. The stock performance of the car rental company has been very disappointing so far this year, as it has lost nearly 30% since the beginning of 2015. However, the stock could represent a real bargain at the moment and we will try to see if that’s the case. Meanwhile, Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital LP and Barry Rosenstein’s JANA Partners, two reputable activist investors, represent the largest shareholders of Hertz Global Holdings within our database, holding stakes of 51.92 million shares and 41.94 million shares, respectively.