Were Hedge Funds Right About Equitable Holdings, Inc. (EQH)?

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 Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) was a good investment heading into the fourth quarter and how the stock traded in comparison to the top hedge fund picks.

Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) was in 46 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 46. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 45 hedge funds in our database with EQH positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that EQH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to view the latest hedge fund action encompassing Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH).

John Petry of Sessa Capital

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 46 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 2% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EQH over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Pzena Investment Management, managed by Richard S. Pzena, holds the number one position in Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH). Pzena Investment Management has a $656 million position in the stock, comprising 2.6% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is John Petry of Sessa Capital, with a $127.2 million position; the fund has 6.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money with similar optimism include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Soapstone Capital allocated the biggest weight to Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH), around 14.01% of its 13F portfolio. Sessa Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 6.25 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EQH.

Consequently, key hedge funds have jumped into Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) headfirst. Samlyn Capital, managed by Robert Pohly, assembled the most valuable position in Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH). Samlyn Capital had $41.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Mark Kingdon’s Kingdon Capital also initiated a $9.9 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new EQH investors: Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, and Gregg Moskowitz’s Interval Partners.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH). These stocks are DaVita Inc (NYSE:DVA), Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY), Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:JKHY), Ares Management Corp (NYSE:ARES), Pentair plc (NYSE:PNR), NovoCure Limited (NASDAQ:NVCR), and Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ:FRSH). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble EQH’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1025 million. That figure was $1704 million in EQH’s case. Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ:FRSH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Equitable Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EQH) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EQH is 86. 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 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 returned 29.6% in 2021 and managed to beat the market by another 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on EQH as the stock returned 14.1% since the end of September (through 1/31) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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