Do Hedge Funds Love Chico’s FAS, Inc. (CHS)?

At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of more than 700 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of September 30. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS) makes for a good investment right now.

Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. CHS investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment recently. There were 19 hedge funds in our database with CHS positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare CHS to other stocks including SM Energy Co. (NYSE:SM), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), and Teekay Corporation (NYSE:TK) to get a better sense of its popularity.

In the financial world there is a multitude of gauges market participants employ to value stocks. A couple of the most useful gauges are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best investment managers can beat their index-focused peers by a superb margin (see the details here).

With all of this in mind, let’s analyze the fresh action surrounding Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS).

Hedge fund activity in Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS)

Heading into Q4, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 21% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Blue Harbour Group, managed by Clifton S. Robbins, holds the biggest position in Chico’s FAS, Inc. (NYSE:CHS). Blue Harbour Group has a $129 million position in the stock, comprising 4% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies, managed by Jim Simons, which holds a $62.2 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism consist of Joel Greenblatt’s Gotham Asset Management, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Matthew Mark’s Jet Capital Investors.