Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (CCO): Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 867 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO)?

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) investors should pay attention to an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers lately. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 44. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with CCO positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that CCO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Now we’re going to review the key hedge fund action regarding Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO).

Do Hedge Funds Think CCO Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 4% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CCO over the last 25 quarters. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Mason Capital Management was the largest shareholder of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO), with a stake worth $57.6 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Mason Capital Management was Legion Partners Asset Management, which amassed a stake valued at $43.2 million. Rubric Capital Management, Brigade Capital, and Halcyon Asset Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Legion Partners Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO), around 8.89% of its 13F portfolio. Mason Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.22 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CCO.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Harspring Capital Management, managed by Harry Gail, created the largest position in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO). Harspring Capital Management had $1.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Frederick DiSanto’s Ancora Advisors, Peter Algert’s Algert Global, and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO). These stocks are WW International, Inc. (NASDAQ:WW), Enova International Inc (NYSE:ENVA), Heartland Express, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTLD), Archrock, Inc. (NYSE:AROC), Echo Global Logistics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ECHO), Addus Homecare Corporation (NASDAQ:ADUS), and World Acceptance Corp. (NASDAQ:WRLD). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to CCO’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $142 million. That figure was $258 million in CCO’s case. WW International, Inc. (NASDAQ:WW) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand World Acceptance Corp. (NASDAQ:WRLD) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CCO is 75.1. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks returned 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th but still managed to beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CCO as the stock returned 15.1% since the end of September (through 12/9) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.