In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds think Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD) is a good investment right now. We like to check what the smart money thinks first before doing extensive research on a given stock. Although there have been several high profile failed hedge fund picks, the consensus picks among hedge fund investors have historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk attributes. It’s not surprising given that hedge funds have access to better information and more resources to predict the winners in the stock market.
Is Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD) the right pick for your portfolio? The best stock pickers were getting more bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions moved up by 3 lately. Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD) was in 39 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 40. Our calculations also showed that PLD isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 36 hedge funds in our database with PLD holdings at the end of December.
To most traders, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers look at the leaders of this group, around 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people orchestrate the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by paying attention to their best picks, Insider Monkey has unsheathed several investment strategies that have historically outperformed the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .
Noam Gottesman of GLG Partners
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Do Hedge Funds Think PLD Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 39 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 8% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards PLD over the last 23 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 Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD) was held by Adage Capital Management, which reported holding $93.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by AQR Capital Management with a $86.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included GLG Partners, Zimmer Partners, and D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Third Avenue Management allocated the biggest weight to Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD), around 3.82% of its 13F portfolio. Socorro Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 3.61 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PLD.
Now, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Zimmer Partners, managed by Stuart J. Zimmer, established the largest position in Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD). Zimmer Partners had $82.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital also initiated a $9.6 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new PLD investors: Andrew Weiss’s Weiss Asset Management, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, and Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD). We will take a look at Truist Financial Corporation (NYSE:TFC), The Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE:BNS), China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (NYSE:SNP), FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX), Zoetis Inc (NYSE:ZTS), Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI), and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (NYSE:PNC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble PLD’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| TFC | 36 | 845826 | -4 |
| BNS | 19 | 239536 | 0 |
| SNP | 11 | 210183 | -2 |
| FDX | 63 | 2263772 | 0 |
| ZTS | 58 | 3124680 | -3 |
| CCI | 43 | 1995629 | 3 |
| PNC | 39 | 418919 | 4 |
| Average | 38.4 | 1299792 | -0.3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 38.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1300 million. That figure was $772 million in PLD’s case. FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (NYSE:SNP) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Prologis Inc (NYSE:PLD) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PLD is 64.2. 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. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and still beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on PLD as the stock returned 15.7% since the end of Q1 (through 6/25) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
Follow Prologis Inc. (NYSE:PLD)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
