How Tegna Inc (TGNA) Stacks Up Against Its Peers

There are several ways to beat the market, and investing in small cap stocks has historically been one of them. We like to improve the odds of beating the market further by examining what famous hedge fund operators such as Carl Icahn and George Soros think. Those hedge fund operators make billions of dollars each year by hiring the best and the brightest to do research on stocks, including small cap stocks that big brokerage houses simply don’t cover. Because of Carl Icahn and other elite funds’ exemplary historical records, we pay attention to their small cap picks. In this article, we use hedge fund filing data to analyze Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA).

Is Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA) worth your attention right now? Investors who are in the know are buying. The number of bullish hedge fund bets inched up by 4 lately. TGNA was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with TGNA holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare TGNA to other stocks including Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL), Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI), and TAL Education Group (ADR) (NYSE:XRS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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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.

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How have hedgies been trading Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a rise of 22% from the second quarter of 2016, returning hedge fund ownership of the stock to its March 31 level. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
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According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Diamond Hill Capital, managed by Ric Dillon, holds the number one position in Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). According to regulatory filings, the fund has a $198.7 million position in the stock, comprising 1.2% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by John W. Rogers of Ariel Investments, with a $135.6 million position; 1.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions comprise Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management, and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.

Now, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Select Equity Group, managed by Robert Joseph Caruso, established the most valuable position in Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). According to its latest 13F filing, the fund had $12.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Brad Dunkley and Blair Levinsky’s Waratah Capital Advisors also made a $6.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new TGNA investors: Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, George Hall’s Clinton Group, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). These stocks are Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL), Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI), TAL Education Group (ADR) (NYSE:XRS), and Robert Half International Inc. (NYSE:RHI). This group of stocks’ market values resemble TGNA’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ODFL 14 67609 -10
GLPI 34 879903 -6
XRS 24 341319 9
RHI 21 252953 -5

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $385 million. That figure was $516 million in TGNA’s case. Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA) 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 more confident in. In this regard GLPI might be a better candidate to consider taking up a long position in.

Disclosure: None