Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About Triple-S Management Corp. (GTS) Anymore

We have been waiting for this for a year and finally the third quarter ended up showing a nice bump in the performance of small-cap stocks. Both the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were up since the end of the second quarter, but small-cap stocks outperformed the large-cap stocks by double digits. This is important for hedge funds, which are big supporters of small-cap stocks, because their investors started pulling some of their capital out due to poor recent performance. It is very likely that equity hedge funds will deliver better risk adjusted returns in the second half of this year. In this article we are going to look at how this recent market trend affected the sentiment of hedge funds towards Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS), and what that likely means for the prospects of the company and its stock.

Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. GTS has experienced a decrease in hedge fund interest lately. There were 10 hedge funds in our database with GTS positions at the end of September. 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 Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:BLCM), Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA), and Flexion Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FLXN) to gather more data points.

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Now, let’s take a glance at the new action surrounding Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS).

What does the smart money think about Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a decline of 23% from the second quarter of 2016. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in GTS heading into this year. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

GTS Chart

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Pzena Investment Management, led by Richard S. Pzena, holds the most valuable position in Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS). According to regulatory filings, the fund has a $43.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Anthony Bozza of Lakewood Capital Management, with a $16.7 million position; 0.4% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions consist of Anders Hallberg and Carl Bennet’s HealthInvest Partners AB, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and D E Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. 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.

Because Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS) has experienced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, we can see that there was a specific group of hedgies that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q4. Interestingly, George Hall’s Clinton Group dropped the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, totaling about $0.4 million in stock. Joshua Packwood and Schuster Tanger’s fund, Radix Partners, also cut its stock, about $0.3 million worth of GTS shares.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS) but similarly valued. These stocks are Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:BLCM), Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA), Flexion Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FLXN), and Alon USA Partners LP (NYSE:ALDW). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to GTS’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
BLCM 3 104833 -1
HFWA 12 23687 -1
FLXN 8 40444 -3
ALDW 4 3706 4

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $43 million. That figure was $89 million in GTS’s case. Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:BLCM) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Triple-S Management Corp. (NYSE:GTS) 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 HFWA might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None