4. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 94
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The financial services provided by Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) include banking, investment, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance products.
Securities filings for Q4 2021 reveal that Israel Englander’s Millennium Management held 7.5 million shares of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC), worth $361.6 million, representing 0.18% of the total 13F portfolio. The billionaire elevated his Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) stake by 452% in the fourth quarter of 2021.
On April 14, Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) reported earnings for the first quarter of 2022, posting an EPS of $0.88, exceeding market consensus estimates by $0.07. Revenue for the period dropped 2.61% from the prior-year quarter, reaching $17.59 billion, falling short of analysts’ predictions by $232.28 million.
Barclays analyst Jason Goldberg on April 18 raised the firm’s price target on Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) to $64 from $62 and kept an Overweight rating on the shares after the Q1 results. The analyst cited Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC)’s 2022 net interest income and loan growth outlook, as well as its unchanged expense forecast despite Q1 coming in higher than expected for the price target upgrade.
According to Insider Monkey’s Q4 data, 94 hedge funds held bullish positions in Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC), compared to 88 funds in the preceding quarter. Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management owned the leading stake in the company, with 20 million shares worth $961.4 million.
Here is what Davis Opportunity Fund has to say about Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“The absolute level of revenues and profits generated by such companies is in fact so large that most of the major financial holdings in the portfolio produce enough annual operating income individually that a number of them could, in theory, purchase several entire businesses among hundreds of choices within the S&P 1500 Index, using just a year’s cash earnings without dipping into capital. This is theoretical, as financial companies would not be in the business of buying healthcare or technology companies, for example, but we point out these facts to illustrate the sheer scale of the economics produced by single financial companies in a given year, which is often a multiple of the cash earnings yielded by companies in a host of other industries.
Given this cash-generation power, we are naturally drawn to what we believe are strong and profitable financial institutions when the price is right. Presently, we believe the valuations of our financial holdings are not only reasonable, but extremely compelling, and our portfolio composition reflects this view. Representative financial holdings in the Fund include Wells Fargo.”
