Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Acushnet Holdings Corp. (GOLF)?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF).

Is Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) ready to rally soon? Prominent investors were in an optimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 1 in recent months. Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) was in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 16. Our calculations also showed that GOLF isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Keeping this in mind let’s check out the latest hedge fund action surrounding Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF).

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

At the end of September, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 9% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 13 hedge funds with a bullish position in GOLF a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Arrowstreet Capital held the most valuable stake in Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF), which was worth $14.5 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Point72 Asset Management which amassed $7.1 million worth of shares. Renaissance Technologies, AQR Capital Management, and Winton Capital Management 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 Weld Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF), around 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Winton Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.08 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GOLF.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, established the biggest position in Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF). Point72 Asset Management had $7.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also initiated a $0.6 million position during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new GOLF position is Minhua Zhang’s Weld Capital Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF). These stocks are Option Care Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPCH), Evertec Inc (NYSE:EVTC), NuVasive, Inc. (NASDAQ:NUVA), Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE:AQUA), Cimarex Energy Co (NYSE:XEC), Pluralsight, Inc. (NASDAQ:PS), and Teradata Corporation (NYSE:TDC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble GOLF’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 25.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $300 million. That figure was $35 million in GOLF’s case. Cimarex Energy Co (NYSE:XEC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Option Care Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPCH) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) is even less popular than OPCH. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GOLF is 28.5. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on GOLF as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on GOLF as the stock returned 19% since Q3 (through December 8th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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