Is Unitil Corporation (UTL) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

We already know that not all hedge funds are bullish on the stock and some hedge funds actually sold off their positions entirely. Interestingly, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital sold off the biggest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $1.2 million in stock. Matthew Hulsizer’s fund, PEAK6 Capital Management, also said goodbye to its call options, about $0.7 million worth of.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Unitil Corporation (NYSE:UTL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Dynagas LNG Partners LP (NYSE:DLNG), Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC), Aclaris Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ACRS), and Otonomy Inc (NASDAQ:OTIC). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to UTL’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $94 million. That figure was $30 million in UTL’s case. Mercer International Inc. (NASDAQ:MERC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Dynagas LNG Partners LP (NYSE:DLNG) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Unitil Corporation (NYSE:UTL) 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 MERC might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.