Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks initially suffered the most but many of these stocks delivered strong returns since November and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment towards LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) changed recently.
LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 28. Our calculations also showed that RAMP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
Peter Algert of Algert Global
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind we’re going to analyze the fresh hedge fund action regarding LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP).
Do Hedge Funds Think RAMP Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of September, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -4% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in RAMP over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) was held by RGM Capital, which reported holding $138.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by D E Shaw with a $28.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Washington Harbour Partners, Renaissance Technologies, and Osterweis Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position RGM Capital allocated the biggest weight to LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP), around 6.79% of its 13F portfolio. Collaborative Holdings Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 5.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to RAMP.
Since LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies that elected to cut their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Joseph Samuels’s Islet Management dropped the biggest position of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $23.4 million in stock, and Spencer M. Waxman’s Shannon River Fund Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $12.4 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest fell by 1 funds last quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP). We will take a look at Simmons First National Corporation (NASDAQ:SFNC), Laureate Education, Inc. (NASDAQ:LAUR), SM Energy Company (NYSE:SM), Kennedy-Wilson Holdings Inc (NYSE:KW), Compania Cervecerias Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU), AtriCure Inc. (NASDAQ:ATRC), and Installed Building Products Inc (NYSE:IBP). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to RAMP’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFNC | 11 | 16268 | 4 |
| LAUR | 21 | 184151 | 1 |
| SM | 24 | 321678 | -1 |
| KW | 13 | 503305 | -5 |
| CCU | 7 | 21568 | -2 |
| ATRC | 21 | 243485 | 0 |
| IBP | 15 | 38662 | 3 |
| Average | 16 | 189874 | 0 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 16 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $190 million. That figure was $313 million in RAMP’s case. SM Energy Company (NYSE:SM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Compania Cervecerias Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. LiveRamp Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RAMP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for RAMP is 79.7. 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 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 gained 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately RAMP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on RAMP were disappointed as the stock returned 3.3% since the end of September (through 12/9) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Liveramp Holdings Inc. (NYSE:RAMP)
Follow Liveramp Holdings Inc. (NYSE:RAMP)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
