Do Hedge Funds Love Telenav Inc (TNAV)?

The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV).

Is Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV) a cheap investment now? Prominent investors are actually taking a bearish view. The number of long hedge fund positions retreated by 1 recently. TNAV was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with TNAV positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare TNAV to other stocks including Eaton Vance Senior Income Trust (NYSE:EVF), Ultra Clean Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UCTT), and Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

How have hedgies been trading Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, down by 10% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards TNAV over the last 5 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, Ariel Investments, led by John W. Rogers, holds the number one position in Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV). Ariel Investments has a $23.2 million position in the stock. The second largest stake is held by Nokomis Capital, led by Brett Hendrickson, which holds a $23 million position; the fund has 4.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that are bullish encompass Renaissance Technologies, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, Brian C. Freckmann’s Lyon Street Capital and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Millennium Management. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because none of the 700+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified TNAV as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV) but similarly valued. These stocks are Eaton Vance Senior Income Trust (NYSE:EVF), Ultra Clean Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UCTT), Marlin Business Services Corp. (NASDAQ:MRLN), and Container Store Group Inc (NYSE:TCS). This group of stocks’ market values match TNAV’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $28 million. That figure was $53 million in TNAV’s case. Ultra Clean Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UCTT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Eaton Vance Senior Income Trust (NYSE:EVF) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Telenav Inc (NASDAQ:TNAV) 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 UCTT might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None