Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (HAIN)?

Is The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) investors should pay attention to a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 35. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with HAIN positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that HAIN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

Fred DiSanto of Ancora Advisors

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. With all of this in mind let’s view the key hedge fund action regarding The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -8% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards HAIN over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Engaged Capital, managed by Glenn W. Welling, holds the number one position in The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN). Engaged Capital has a $684.3 million position in the stock, comprising 49.2% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is David Paradice of Paradice Investment Management, with a $82.7 million position; the fund has 3.7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other peers that are bullish consist of George Soros’s Soros Fund Management, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Engaged Capital allocated the biggest weight to The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN), around 49.16% of its 13F portfolio. Paradice Investment Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 3.74 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HAIN.

Since The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there were a few money managers who were dropping their full holdings last quarter. Intriguingly, Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser’s Magnetar Capital dropped the biggest stake of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $2.1 million in stock. Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s fund, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, also dumped its stock, about $0.7 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds last quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN). We will take a look at The Ensign Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENSG), Lemonade, Inc. (NYSE:LMND), Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE:WRBY), ExlService Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXLS), Magnolia Oil & Gas Corporation (NASDAQ:MGY), LivePerson, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPSN), and CI Financial Corp (NYSE:CIXX). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble HAIN’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $320 million. That figure was $982 million in HAIN’s case. Magnolia Oil & Gas Corporation (NASDAQ:MGY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Warby Parker Inc. (NYSE:WRBY) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HAIN is 61.1. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately HAIN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on HAIN were disappointed as the stock returned -8.9% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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.

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

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