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. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 866 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 March 31st. In this article we look at what those investors think of Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST).
Is Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) a splendid investment today? Investors who are in the know were taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 1 in recent months. Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) was in 45 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 50. Our calculations also showed that MNST isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 44 hedge funds in our database with MNST positions at the end of the fourth quarter.
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Peter Algert of Algert Global
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Do Hedge Funds Think MNST Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 2% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 43 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in MNST a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST), which was worth $724.8 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Broadwood Capital which amassed $424.2 million worth of shares. AQR Capital Management, Arrowstreet Capital, and D E Shaw 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 Broadwood Capital allocated the biggest weight to Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST), around 22.55% of its 13F portfolio. Lakehouse Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 10.35 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MNST.
As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. CaaS Capital, managed by Frank Fu, assembled the most valuable position in Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST). CaaS Capital had $10.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management also initiated a $4.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new MNST positions are Thomas Bailard’s Bailard Inc, Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, and Peter Algert’s Algert Global.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Marriott International Inc (NASDAQ:MAR), Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE:EPD), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX), Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING), Dow Inc. (NYSE:DOW), and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ:WBA). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MNST’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| MAR | 58 | 3068754 | 0 |
| EPD | 26 | 299289 | -4 |
| FCX | 68 | 3290981 | 7 |
| F | 49 | 2197658 | 8 |
| ING | 10 | 532082 | 1 |
| DOW | 41 | 717981 | -6 |
| WBA | 41 | 1132820 | 5 |
| Average | 41.9 | 1605652 | 1.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 41.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1606 million. That figure was $2382 million in MNST’s case. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MNST is 63.2. 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 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately MNST wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MNST were disappointed as the stock returned 0.7% since the end of March (through 6/18) 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 Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST)
Follow Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
