Five Cheap Stocks Hedge Funds Are Bullish On

#4 Hertz Global Holdings Inc (NYSE:HTZ)

– Investors with Long Positions (as of March 31): 47

– Aggregate value of investors’ holding (as of March 31): $1.8 billion

The ownership of Hertz Global Holdings Inc (NYSE:HTZ) among hedge funds covered by us declined by five and the aggregate value of their holdings also fell by $696 million during the first quarter. Notable investors that brought down their holding in the company during that period included Karthik Sarma‘s SRS Investment Management and Jeffrey Tannenbaum‘s Fir Tree. While SRS Investment Management reduced its stake by 18% to 10 million shares, Fir Tree cut it by 56% 56% to 7.77 million shares. Hertz Global Holdings Inc (NYSE:HTZ) has been continuously losing market share to ridesharing services like Uber, which has taken a heavy toll on its financial results and stock price for the last two years. On May 9, the company reported a fiscal first quarter loss for the first time in several quarters. While analysts had expected it to report a loss of $0.01 per share on revenue of $2.39 billion, Hertz Global Holdings declared a loss of $0.12 per share on revenue of $2.31 billion.

#3 Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS)

– Investors with Long Positions (as of March 31): 52

– Aggregate value of investors’ holding (as of March 31): $1.24 billion

Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS) burnt the fingers of several hedge funds recently when its stock plummeted after the company along with Office Depot called off their $6.3 billion merger. Heading into the second quarter, several hedge funds were confident that this merger would get completed as the ownership of the stock among funds tracked by us had gone up by three and the aggregate value of their holdings had increased by $182 million during the first quarter. James Dondero‘s Highland Capital Management  was one of the lucky hedge funds that managed to save itself from heavy losses by selling all the 334,900 shares it held of Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS) during the first quarter. On May 18, Staples reported its first quarter numbers, which included EPS of $0.17 on revenue of $5.10 billion, versus analysts’ projections of $0.16 in EPS on revenue of $5.08 billion. The quarterly results impressed analysts of Bank of America and they upgraded Staples to ‘Buy’ from ‘Underperform’ and raised their price target to $10 from $8.10.