Do Hedge Funds Love National Retail Properties, Inc. (NNN)?

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. LMR Partners, led by Ben Levine, Andrew Manuel and Stefan Renold, created the biggest position in National Retail Properties, Inc. (NYSE:NNN). LMR Partners had $6.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital also made a $3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new NNN positions are Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners, Simon Sadler’s Segantii Capital, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as National Retail Properties, Inc. (NYSE:NNN) but similarly valued. These stocks are Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI), Ralph Lauren Corp (NYSE:RL), Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR), and Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to NNN’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $972 million. That figure was $103 million in NNN’s case. Sabre Corp (NASDAQ:SABR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Msci Inc (NYSE:MSCI) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks National Retail Properties, Inc. (NYSE:NNN) is even less popular than MSCI. 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