Do Hedge Funds Love AptarGroup, Inc. (ATR)?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and famous investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds and investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find write-ups about an individual hedge fund’s trades on several financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves and analyze what the smart money thinks of AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) based on that data.

Is AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) a bargain? Prominent investors are unambiguously in a bearish mood. The number of long hedge fund investments shrunk by 5 lately. ATRwas in 12 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with ATR holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Ares Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:ARCC), Communications Sales & Leasing Inc (NASDAQ:CSAL), and Bemis Company, Inc. (NYSE:BMS) to gather more data points.

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We care about hedge fund sentiment because historically hedge funds’ stock picks delivered strong risk adjusted returns. There are certain segments of the market where hedge funds’ stock picks performed much better than its benchmarks. For instance, the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks among the best performing hedge funds returned 18% over the last 12 months outpacing S&P 500 Index by more than 10 percentage points. We developed this strategy 2.5 years ago and started sharing its picks in our quarterly newsletter. It bested the S&P 500 Index ETFs by delivering a solid 39% vs. 22% gain for its benchmarks.

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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the fresh action regarding AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR).

What have hedge funds been doing with AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR)?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 12 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a drop of 29% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 16 hedge funds with a bullish position in ATR at the beginning of this year. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

HedgeFundSentimentChart

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the most valuable position in AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR), worth close to $32.3 million, corresponding to 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Citadel Investment Group, led by Ken Griffin, holding a $17.7 million position; the fund has less than 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism comprise Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that sold off their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital sold off the biggest stake of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $7.3 million in stock. Andrew Sandler’s fund, Sandler Capital Management, also dropped its stock, about $5.6 million worth AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) shares.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR). We will take a look at Ares Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:ARCC), Communications Sales & Leasing Inc (NASDAQ:CSAL), Bemis Company, Inc. (NYSE:BMS), and Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to ATR’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ARCC 19 171701 2
CSAL 24 473532 0
BMS 16 165865 -2
BIO 29 562873 7

As you can see these stocks had an average of 22 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $343 million. That figure was $81 million in ATR’s case. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Bemis Company, Inc. (NYSE:BMS) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) is even less popular than BMS. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.

Disclosure: none.