5 Most Owned Stocks by Hedge Funds

In this article, we discuss 5 most owned stocks by hedge funds. If you want to read our detailed analysis of popular hedge funds and their performance, check out 25 Most Owned Stocks by Hedge Funds. 

5. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 173

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) operates as a payments technology company worldwide. On June 28, Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) entered into an agreement to acquire Pismo, a cloud-based payment and banking platform, for a cash amount of $1 billion. This acquisition aims to enable Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) to enhance its primary banking and issuer processing capabilities for a wide range of financial institutions and fintech clients. Furthermore, this move will facilitate support and connectivity for emerging payment systems such as Pix, the instant payment platform of the Central Bank of Brazil. The transaction is expected to be finalized by the end of this year. 

According to Insider Monkey’s first quarter database, 173 hedge funds were bullish on Visa Inc. (NYSE:V), compared to 177 funds in the prior quarter. Chris Hohn’s TCI Fund Management is the largest stakeholder of the company, with 19.3 million shares worth $4.3 billion. 

Manole Capital Management made the following comment about Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter:

“We like to start out all of our discussions by telling investors who we are. We are FINTECH investors, and we define Fintech as “anything utilizing technology to improve an established process.” We realize that half of Fintech is financial, but we don’t invest in traditional, credit sensitive banks. Having managed money during the Financial Crisis, we learned firsthand how certain opaque and balance sheet intensive financials could go bankrupt or insolvent.

We prefer transaction-based businesses, generating recurring revenue, with sustainable margins, and significant cash flow. From our perspective, the perfect example of a FINTECH business is the secularly growing payments industry. Names like Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) or Mastercard, that generate revenue and profit per swipe or transaction, without the underlying credit sensitivity or risk associated with that underlying line of credit.”