Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About Macerich Co (MAC) Anymore

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and famous investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds and investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find write-ups about an individual hedge fund’s trades on several financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves and analyze what the smart money thinks of Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC) based on that data.

Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC) investors should pay attention to a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. MAC was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with MAC positions at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Nomura Holdings, Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:NMR), Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR), and Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN) to gather more data points.

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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the latest action encompassing Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC).

What does the smart money think about Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, down 5% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

HedgeFundSentimentChart

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Martin Whitman’s Third Avenue Management has the largest position in Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC), worth close to $62.8 million and comprising 2.9% of its total 13F portfolio. On Third Avenue Management’s heels is Jeffrey Furber of AEW Capital Management, with a $62.1 million position; the fund has 1.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other professional money managers that hold long positions encompass D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.

Because Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC) has experienced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there was a specific group of hedge funds that elected to cut their full holdings in the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group cut the largest position of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $4.5 million in stock. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s fund, Two Sigma Advisors, also dumped its stock, about $1.5 million worth of Macerich shares. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 fund in the third quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC). These stocks are Nomura Holdings, Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:NMR), Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR), Waste Connections, Inc. (NYSE:WCN), and BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ:BMRN). All of these stocks’ market caps match MAC’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
NMR 3 5817 -3
WHR 34 1469379 -3
WCN 29 986577 1
BMRN 54 1669740 12

As you can see these stocks had an average of 30 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.03 billion. That figure was a meager $273 million in MAC’s case. BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ:BMRN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nomura Holdings, Inc. (ADR) (NYSE:NMR) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Macerich Co (NYSE:MAC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard BMRN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

Disclosure: none.