Best Buy Co., Inc. (BBY) Tumbles on Tepid Guidance

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Because Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) has faced bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who were dropping their positions entirely last quarter. Intriguingly, William Harnisch’s Peconic Partners LLC dumped the biggest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $33.9 million in call options, while Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $30.5 million worth of shares. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 fund last quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) but similarly valued. These stocks are Credicorp Ltd. (USA) (NYSE:BAP), Pembina Pipeline Corp (NYSE:PBA), Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV), and Tesoro Corporation (NYSE:TSO). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to BBY’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
BAP 19 397015 1
PBA 11 41472 7
ALV 7 44678 -3
TSO 37 1480841 -5

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 $491 million. That figure was $553 million in BBY’s case. Tesoro Corporation (NYSE:TSO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Autoliv Inc. (NYSE:ALV) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard TSO might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

Disclosure: None

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