5 Stocks That Are Benefiting Greatly From Pokemon Go

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

– Hedge Funds with Long Positions (as of March 31): 152

– Aggregate Value of Hedge Funds’ Holdings (as of March 31): $14.82 billion

– Percentage of Shares Owned by Hedge Funds (as of March 31): 2.50%

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

– Hedge Funds with Long Positions (as of March 31): 215

– Aggregate Value of Hedge Funds’ Holdings (as of March 31): $29.88 billion

– Percentage of Shares Owned by Hedge Funds (as of March 31): 2.90%

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) make the list for the same reason, as they each enjoy a healthy cut of the game’s revenue, with minimal expense of their own. Each company collects about 30% of the game’s in-app purchases made through their app stores, which will add millions to their bottom-lines, with Pokemon Go reportedly pulling in over $10 million in app sales daily according to App Annie. Pokemon Go has soared past 50 million downloads through the Google Play Store, while topping 25 million on iOS devices.

Given that Apple and Google are $500+ billion companies, the fact that they’re actually raking in more Pokemon Go dough than Nintendo right now is still having a smaller effect on their stocks. Google is up by 12% since the game’s release, while Apple is up by nearly 10%. However both companies have also released positive earnings reports during that time, which contributed to some of those gains (almost all of them in Apple’s case). Still, Pokemon Go and the potential for future hit Nintendo or augmented reality games on their app stores is icing on the cake for the two tech behemoths.

As an interesting aside, Pokemon Go developer Niantic was formerly a part of Google before that company’s re-organization into Alphabet last year, at which point Niantic was spun off into an independent company. It later inked a $30 million pact with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company and the rest is history.

A combined 215 hedge funds in our database owned either the Class A (GOOG) or Class C (GOOGL) shares of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on March 31, while 152 hedge funds were shareholders of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Those investors had nearly $45 billion invested in the two companies. Billionaire Ken Fisher‘s Fisher Asset Management owns large positions in both stocks as of the end of June.

T MOBILE US INC (NYSE:TMUS)

– Hedge Funds with Long Positions (as of March 31): 52

– Aggregate Value of Hedge Funds’ Holdings (as of March 31): $2.32 billion

– Percentage of Shares Owned by Hedge Funds (as of March 31): 7.40%

Lastly is T MOBILE US INC (NYSE:TMUS), shares of which have gained over 7% since Pokemon Go’s release. The carrier is offering free Pokemon Go data coverage to customers for a year to try and sway some of the game’s massive player base into switching carriers, though the game’s data usage is not particularly high. Known as “zero-rating”, the practice of exempting certain services from data charges is a controversial one in terms of net neutrality, as it encourages users to prioritize the use of one app or game over another. While T-Mobile has also benefited from a strong earnings report this month that showed robust subscriber growth (before Pokemon Go was released), investors are also looking at the game to drive further subs growth in the coming quarters.

T MOBILE US INC (NYSE:TMUS) was held by 52 hedge funds that we track as of March 31, up from 50 at the end of 2015. Billionaire John Paulson‘s Paulson & Co owned 14.62 million shares of the company at the end of March.

Disclosure: None