The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW) based on those filings.
Is Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW) a safe investment today? Investors who are in the know were becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 8 recently. Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW) was in 66 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 58. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that WLTW isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Boykin Curry of Eagle Capital
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW).
Do Hedge Funds Think WLTW Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 66 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 14% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards WLTW over the last 23 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW) was held by Farallon Capital, which reported holding $715.1 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Baupost Group with a $572.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Eagle Capital Management, Cantillon Capital Management, and Adage Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hunting Hill Global Capital allocated the biggest weight to Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW), around 20.41% of its 13F portfolio. Ursa Fund Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 17.57 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to WLTW.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Baupost Group, managed by Seth Klarman, created the biggest position in Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW). Baupost Group had $572.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management also made a $457 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new WLTW investors: Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, Barry Lebovits and Joshua Kuntz’s Rivulet Capital, and Renaissance Technologies.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW). We will take a look at AMETEK, Inc. (NYSE:AME), ANSYS, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANSS), Otis Worldwide Corporation (NYSE:OTIS), Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO), Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA), Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDK), and Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to WLTW’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AME | 32 | 909796 | 1 |
| ANSS | 33 | 1503462 | -7 |
| OTIS | 52 | 2750826 | -7 |
| VLO | 41 | 462502 | 3 |
| LBRDA | 23 | 774868 | -3 |
| LBRDK | 70 | 6857308 | -10 |
| DFS | 45 | 654294 | 2 |
| Average | 42.3 | 1987579 | -3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 42.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1988 million. That figure was $5189 million in WLTW’s case. Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Liberty Broadband Corp (NASDAQ:LBRDA) is the least popular one with only 23 bullish hedge fund positions. Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:WLTW) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for WLTW is 85.7. 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 25.8% in 2021 through August 6th and beat the market again by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately WLTW wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on WLTW were disappointed as the stock returned -5.4% since the end of March (through 8/6) 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.
Follow Willis Towers Watson Plc (NYSE:WTW)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
