Superior Industries International Inc. (SUP): Does It Stack Up To Its Peers?

Legendary investors such as Leon Cooperman and Seth Klarman earn enormous amounts of money for themselves and their investors by doing in-depth research on small-cap stocks that big brokerage houses don’t publish. Small cap stocks -especially when they are screened well- can generate substantial outperformance versus a boring index fund. That’s why we analyze the activity of those successful funds in these small-cap stocks. In the following paragraphs, we analyze Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP) from the perspective of those successful funds.

Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most successful money managers of late. SUP was in 14 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 16 hedge funds in our database with SUP holdings at the end of June. At the end of this article we will also compare SUP to other stocks including S.Y. Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT), Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. Class A (NYSE:OSG), and ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP) to get a better sense of its popularity.

We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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How are hedge funds trading Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 14 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a 13% drop from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards SUP over the last 5 quarters, which spiked in Q1, but has otherwise remained mostly flat. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the number one position in Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP), worth close to $37.9 million. On GAMCO Investors’ heels is Royce & Associates, led by Chuck Royce, which holds a $15.6 million position. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, John W. Rogers’ Ariel Investments, and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds, which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-micro-cap stocks.

Judging by the fact that Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there is a sect of fund managers who sold off their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group dumped the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $1.2 million in stock. Paul Tudor Jones’ fund, Tudor Investment Corp, also cut its stock, about $0.4 million worth.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP). We will take a look at S.Y. Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT), Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. Class A (NYSE:OSG), ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. (NASDAQ:ZIOP), and PBF Logistics LP (NYSE:PBFX). This group of stocks’ market valuations match SUP’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $38 million. That figure was $89 million in SUP’s case. Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. Class A (NYSE:OSG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PBF Logistics LP (NYSE:PBFX) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Superior Industries International Inc. (NYSE:SUP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard OSG might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None