Should I Buy Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (APOG)?

In this article we will check out the progression of hedge fund sentiment towards Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG) and determine whether it is a good investment right now. We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before spending days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more incentives and resources than the average investor. The funds have access to expert networks and get tips from industry insiders. They also employ numerous Ivy League graduates and MBAs. Like everyone else, hedge funds perform miserably at times, but their consensus picks have historically outperformed the market after risk adjustments.

Should I buy Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG)? Prominent investors were taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund positions increased by 2 recently. Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 20. Our calculations also showed that APOG 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.

According to most stock holders, hedge funds are seen as unimportant, old investment vehicles of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading at present, We look at the top tier of this club, about 850 funds. These hedge fund managers control bulk of the smart money’s total capital, and by tailing their first-class equity investments, Insider Monkey has deciphered numerous investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Asset Management

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. Now let’s view the latest hedge fund action regarding Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 20% from the second quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in APOG over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Arrowstreet Capital was the largest shareholder of Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG), with a stake worth $8.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Arrowstreet Capital was D E Shaw, which amassed a stake valued at $3.3 million. AQR Capital Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Skylands Capital allocated the biggest weight to Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG), around 0.17% of its 13F portfolio. Engineers Gate Manager is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to APOG.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, established the most valuable position in Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG). Marshall Wace LLP had $0.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management also made a $0.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Crossamerica Partners LP (NYSE:CAPL), Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NASDAQ:ACB), FinVolution Group (NYSE:FINV), Ribbon Communications Inc. (NASDAQ:RBBN), Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH), iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT), and UMH Properties, Inc (NYSE:UMH). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to APOG’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $25 million. That figure was $25 million in APOG’s case. iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Crossamerica Partners LP (NYSE:CAPL) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:APOG) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for APOG is 52.5. 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 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on APOG as the stock returned 35.7% since the end of Q3 (through 12/8) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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