Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Workiva Inc (WK)?

With the first-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the second quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK).

Is Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK) an exceptional stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 3 lately. Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 22. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that WK isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 19 hedge funds in our database with WK positions at the end of the fourth quarter.

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Kevin Oram of Praesidium Investment Management Company

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 16% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 16 hedge funds with a bullish position in WK a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $119.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Praesidium Investment Management Company with a $91.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Washington Harbour Partners, and Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Washington Harbour Partners allocated the biggest weight to Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK), around 6.22% of its 13F portfolio. Praesidium Investment Management Company is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 4.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to WK.

As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Collaborative Holdings Management, managed by Sheetal Sharma, created the biggest position in Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK). Collaborative Holdings Management had $6.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also made a $4.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new WK positions are Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, and Parvinder Thiara’s Athanor Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK) but similarly valued. We will take a look at SAGE Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:SAGE), 21Vianet Group Inc (NASDAQ:VNET), ChampionX Corporation (NASDAQ:CHX), The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAIN), Selective Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIGI), Quaker Chemical Corp (NYSE:KWR), and ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble WK’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $447 million. That figure was $439 million in WK’s case. 21Vianet Group Inc (NASDAQ:VNET) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Selective Insurance Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIGI) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Workiva Inc (NYSE:WK) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for WK is 64.5. 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. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and still beat the market by 7.7 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on WK as the stock returned 35.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 7/16) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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