Do Hedge Funds and Insiders Love H&R Block, Inc. (HRB)?

H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late.

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are assumed to be unimportant, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds trading today, we at Insider Monkey choose to focus on the bigwigs of this club, close to 450 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group oversees the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by tracking their highest performing investments, we have unearthed a number of investment strategies that have historically beaten the broader indices. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy beat the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve began to sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have topped the S&P 500 index by 23.3 percentage points in 8 months (see the details here).

Just as beneficial, optimistic insider trading activity is a second way to break down the marketplace. Just as you’d expect, there are a number of reasons for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very simple reason why they would behave bullishly. Many empirical studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of this method if “monkeys” understand what to do (learn more here).

Now, let’s take a glance at the recent action regarding H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB).

How have hedgies been trading H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB)?

In preparation for this quarter, a total of 34 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 21% from one quarter earlier. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global had the biggest position in H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB), worth close to $744.3 million, accounting for 4.5% of its total 13F portfolio. On Viking Global’s heels is John Lykouretzos of Hoplite Capital Management, with a $213.3 million position; 6.9% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds that hold long positions include Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Eric Chen’s Antipodean Advisors and Jean-Marie Eveillard’s First Eagle Investment Management.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Hoplite Capital Management, managed by John Lykouretzos, assembled the most valuable position in H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB). Hoplite Capital Management had 213.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital also made a $198.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new HRB positions are Eric Chen’s Antipodean Advisors, Rob Butts and Josh Clark’s Southpoint Capital Advisors, and David Goel and Paul Ferri’s Matrix Capital Management.

Insider trading activity in H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB)

Bullish insider trading is best served when the company in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last 180-day time frame, H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s go over hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE:HRB). These stocks are VCA Antech Inc (NASDAQ:WOOF), Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc (NYSE:BFAM), Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW), Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI), and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA). This group of stocks belong to the personal services industry and their market caps are similar to HRB’s market cap.