Hedge Fund Data Suggests These Upgraded Stocks Are Worth Your Attention

Another stock that traded higher in today’s session is Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), which was upgraded by Stifel Nicolaus to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ with a price target of $40. PayPal, which was spun-off from eBay and went public at the end of July, was upgraded because of its One Touch feature, which the analyst believes has the potential to drive the company’s Total Payment Volume (TPV) annual growth to its 21.8% estimate for 2016. According to reports, PayPal’s One Touch is still in the early stages of a global rollout, accounting for only 5% of the US transaction at present but Stifel believes that PayPal’s competition position, new product opportunities, international initiatives, and strategic M&A make the stock a worthy investment.

Since Paypal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) went public earlier this quarter, we do not have the data regarding the company’s popularity among hedge funds. However, taking into account that at the end of June 99 funds held $11.73 billion worth of eBay’s stock, accounting for 16% of the company, we can see that investors were rather excited about the prospects of becoming shareholders of PayPal. Under the terms of the spin-off transaction, eBay shareholders received one Paypal share for every share they held before the deal. Among the top shareholders of eBay at the end of June, Carl Icahn‘s Icahn Capital held the largest position and was among the investors that pushed for the separation of PayPal; Icahn held 46.27 million shares, valued at $2.79 billion at the end of June, representing 8.9% of its equity portfolio. It was followed by William B. Gray’s Orbis Investment Management, which increased its holding by 32% to 16.22 million shares and Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management, which owns 11.93 million shares.

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