Hedge Funds Are Dumping Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q)

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Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest of late. Q was in 34 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 37 hedge funds in our database with Q holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare Q to other stocks including Duke Realty Corp (NYSE:DRE), Huaneng Power International Inc (ADR) (NYSE:HNP), and Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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With all of this in mind, we’re going to review the new action regarding Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q).

How are hedge funds trading Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 34 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a decline of 8% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards Q 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, Larry Robbins’s Glenview Capital has the number one position in Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q), worth close to $274.1 million, comprising 2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Brahman Capital, led by Peter Adam Hochfelder, which holds a $257.6 million position; the fund has 9.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Robert Pitts’s Steadfast Capital Management, Jacob Doft’s Highline Capital Management and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. 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.

Judging by the fact that Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q) has sustained bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there lies a certain “tier” of fund managers who sold off their entire stakes in the third quarter. Interestingly, Andrew Immerman and Jeremy Schiffman’s Palestra Capital Management said goodbye to the largest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $54.2 million in stock, and Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $27.2 million worth of shares.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q). These stocks are Duke Realty Corp (NYSE:DRE), Huaneng Power International Inc (ADR) (NYSE:HNP), Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE:HBI), and Liberty Interactive Corp (NASDAQ:QVCA). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to Q’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.04 billion. That figure was $1.25 billion in Q’s case. Liberty Interactive Corp (NASDAQ:QVCA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Huaneng Power International Inc (ADR) (NYSE:HNP) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Quintiles IMS Holdings Inc (NYSE:Q) 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 QVCA might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.