Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On AmerisourceBergen Corporation (ABC)?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) in this article.

AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) has experienced an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) was in 44 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 47. There were 43 hedge funds in our database with ABC positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that ABC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

Aaron Cowen of Suvretta Capital 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 take a glance at the new hedge fund action encompassing AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 44 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 2% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ABC over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Larry Robbins’s Glenview Capital has the largest position in AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC), worth close to $225.3 million, comprising 4.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Aaron Cowen of Suvretta Capital Management, with a $147.5 million position; the fund has 2.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions comprise Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Arthur B Cohen and Joseph Healey’s Healthcor Management LP and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Healthcor Management LP allocated the biggest weight to AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC), around 4.62% of its 13F portfolio. Glenview Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.13 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ABC.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, initiated the most outsized position in AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC). D E Shaw had $56.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management also made a $24.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, and Zach Schreiber’s Point State Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC). We will take a look at Cheniere Energy, Inc. (NYSE:LNG), Horizon Therapeutics Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:HZNP), Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE), Sirius XM Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:SIRI), Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Upstart Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST), and Yum China Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YUMC). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to ABC’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 46.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3550 million. That figure was $1215 million in ABC’s case. Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Upstart Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:UPST) is the least popular one with only 23 bullish hedge fund positions. AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ABC is 53.2. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and surpassed the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately ABC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ABC investors were disappointed as the stock returned -2.7% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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.

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

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