Staples, Inc. (SPLS): Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS).

Is Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS) going to take off soon? Money managers are getting more optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions rose by 2 lately. At the end of this article we will also compare SPLS to other stocks including SS and C Technologies Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:SSNC), Reliance Steel & Aluminum (NYSE:RS), and Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA (ADR) (NYSE:GOL) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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With all of this in mind, we’re going to check out the latest action encompassing Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS).

What does the smart money think about Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, up 6% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Richard S. Pzena’s Pzena Investment Management has the most valuable position in Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS), worth close to $292.2 million and comprising 1.8% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Stelliam Investment Management, managed by Ross Margolies, which holds a $75 million position; 2.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining peers with similar optimism comprise Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital.