A Look at the Hedge Fund Sentiment Towards LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (LBTYK)

Is LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

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Is LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK) a bargain? Investors who are in the know are getting more optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund bets has risen by 1 lately. LBTYK was in 89 hedge funds’ portfolio at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 88 hedge funds in our database with LBTYK positions at the end of the previous quarter.

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To the average investor, there are tons of metrics that market participants can use to analyze stocks. Some of the most innovative metrics are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Experts at hedge fund tracking site Insider Monkey have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can beat the market by a superb amount (see the details here).

Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at the key action surrounding LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK).

Hedge fund activity in LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK)

At Q3’s end, a total of 89 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long in this stock, a change of 1% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully.

According to Insider Monkey, Boykin Curry’s Eagle Capital Management had the number one position in LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK), worth close to $1.2 billion, accounting for 5.5% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is SPO Advisory Corp, managed by John H. Scully, which held a $651.9 million position; the fund has 11% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds with similar optimism consist of Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and William B. Gray’s Orbis Investment Management.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Brenner West Capital Partners, managed by Joshua Kaufman and Craig Nerenberg, assembled the most valuable position in LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK). Brenner West Capital Partners had $115.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital also initiated an $83.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Jeff Lignelli’s Incline Global Management, Paritosh Gupta’s Adi Capital Management, and Marc Majzner’s Clearline Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK). We will take a look at Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL), JD.Com Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:JD), Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK), and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN). This group of stocks’ market valuations matches LBTYK’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
DAL 109 7318759 -5
JD 71 9101669 -4
SYK 26 883300 -11
ALXN 33 2409398 -16

As you can see these stocks had an average of 60 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $4928 million. Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) is the least popular one with only 26 bullish hedge fund positions. LIBERTY GLOBAL PLC (NASDAQ:LBTYK) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard DAL might be a better candidate to consider a long position.