The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey have plowed through 867 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 4300 level. Since then investors decided to bet on the economic recovery and a stock market rebound even though we experienced a temporary correction in January. In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds thought Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) was a good investment heading into the fourth quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.
Is Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) ready to rally soon? Investors who are in the know were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 11 in recent months. Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) was in 33 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic was previously 22. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that ASAN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
David Blood of Generation Investment Management
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. Now we’re going to review the new hedge fund action regarding Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN).
Do Hedge Funds Think ASAN Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q3’s end, a total of 33 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 50% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ASAN over the last 25 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management LLC has the number one position in Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN), worth close to $299.2 million, accounting for 0.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Joel Ramin of 12 West Capital Management, with a $145.4 million position; 6.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other peers that are bullish comprise David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management, Renaissance Technologies and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Whetstone Capital Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN), around 6.98% of its 13F portfolio. 12 West Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 6.63 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ASAN.
As aggregate interest increased, some big names were breaking ground themselves. D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, created the biggest position in Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN). D E Shaw had $38.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Brad Farber’s Atika Capital also made a $12.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ASAN investors: Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management, Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, and Mikal Patel’s Oribel Capital Management.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) but similarly valued. These stocks are PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ:TECH), Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF), Burlington Stores Inc (NYSE:BURL), Restaurant Brands International Inc (NYSE:QSR), Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE:AGR), and Tradeweb Markets Inc. (NASDAQ:TW). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ASAN’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCG | 54 | 3825487 | -10 |
| TECH | 33 | 432450 | 8 |
| RJF | 32 | 767984 | 3 |
| BURL | 45 | 1835947 | 2 |
| QSR | 22 | 1873877 | 0 |
| AGR | 9 | 37232 | -3 |
| TW | 22 | 135429 | 7 |
| Average | 31 | 1272629 | 1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 31 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1273 million. That figure was $1053 million in ASAN’s case. PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE:AGR) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ASAN is 66.7. 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 29.6% in 2021 and beat the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately, ASAN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ASAN were disappointed as the stock returned -49.5% since the end of September (through 1/31) 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 all of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Asana Inc. (NYSE:ASAN)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
