A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended June 30th, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL).
The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 25. UL has seen a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with UL positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that UL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Do Hedge Funds Think UL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of June, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -5% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in UL over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL) was held by Gardner Russo & Gardner, which reported holding $569.5 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Fisher Asset Management with a $134.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, Renaissance Technologies, and Levin Easterly Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Pittencrieff Partners – Gabalex Capital allocated the biggest weight to The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL), around 5.5% of its 13F portfolio. Gardner Russo & Gardner is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.81 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to UL.
Judging by the fact that The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL) has experienced falling interest from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few hedgies who were dropping their entire stakes in the second quarter. Interestingly, Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management cut the biggest stake of the 750 funds tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $47.4 million in stock. D. E. Shaw’s fund, D E Shaw, also sold off its stock, about $29.5 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds in the second quarter.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL). These stocks are Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON), Linde plc (NYSE:LIN), Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY), Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C), Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP), and Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to UL’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| HON | 57 | 1834599 | 1 |
| LIN | 55 | 5920316 | 12 |
| BMY | 73 | 5202516 | -8 |
| CHTR | 75 | 19486659 | 1 |
| C | 87 | 6155245 | -3 |
| UNP | 69 | 5034926 | -6 |
| RY | 18 | 905415 | 0 |
| Average | 62 | 6362811 | -0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 62 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $6363 million. That figure was $844 million in UL’s case. Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) 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. The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for UL is 27.5. 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 negative signal and 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 through November 5th and surpassed the market again by 3.1 percentage points. Unfortunately UL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); UL investors were disappointed as the stock returned -8% since the end of June (through 11/5) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.
Follow The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL)
Follow The Unilever Group (NYSE:UL)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
