At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 873 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of June 30th. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) makes for a good investment right now.
Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) investors should pay attention to an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) was in 75 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 134. Our calculations also showed that CHTR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Do Hedge Funds Think CHTR Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q2’s end, a total of 75 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 1% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 96 hedge funds with a bullish position in CHTR a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, TCI Fund Management was the largest shareholder of Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR), with a stake worth $7492.6 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing TCI Fund Management was Berkshire Hathaway, which amassed a stake valued at $3761.3 million. Egerton Capital Limited, GQG Partners, and AltaRock Partners 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 Triple Frond Partners allocated the biggest weight to Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR), around 24.85% of its 13F portfolio. AltaRock Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 24.05 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CHTR.
Consequently, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, created the biggest position in Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR). Viking Global had $80.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. James Crichton’s Hitchwood Capital Management also initiated a $31 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, Joshua Pearl’s Hickory Lane Capital Management, and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR). We will take a look at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP), Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY), Sea Limited (NYSE:SE), NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NEE), Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD), and The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble CHTR’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | 87 | 6155245 | -3 |
| UNP | 69 | 5034926 | -6 |
| RY | 18 | 905415 | 0 |
| SE | 104 | 12209916 | 6 |
| NEE | 59 | 2686533 | -4 |
| BUD | 18 | 1234449 | 0 |
| BA | 59 | 1368946 | 0 |
| Average | 59.1 | 4227919 | -1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 59.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4228 million. That figure was $19487 million in CHTR’s case. Sea Limited (NYSE:SE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CHTR is 55.9. 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 26.3% in 2021 through October 29th and beat the market again by 2.3 percentage points. Unfortunately CHTR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CHTR were disappointed as the stock returned -6.5% since the end of June (through 10/29) 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
