Do Hedge Funds Love Manchester United PLC (MANU)?

Since Manchester United PLC (NYSE:MANU) has faced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of funds who were dropping their positions entirely heading into Q4. Intriguingly, Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management dumped the largest position of all the investors followed by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $0.2 million in call options. Israel Englander’s fund, Millennium Management, also said goodbye to its stock, about $0.2 million worth of shares.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Manchester United PLC (NYSE:MANU). We will take a look at United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X), Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc (NYSE:BXMT), Columbia Property Trust Inc (NYSE:CXP), and Terex Corporation (NYSE:TEX). All of these stocks’ market caps match MANU’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $376 million. That figure was $109 million in MANU’s case. United States Steel Corporation (NYSE:X) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Columbia Property Trust Inc (NYSE:CXP) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Manchester United PLC (NYSE:MANU) is even less popular than CXP. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.

Disclosure: none.