Hedge Funds Are Cashing Out of Crown Holdings, Inc. (CCK)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 867 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their September 30th holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Is Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) the right pick for your portfolio? Hedge funds were taking a bearish view. The number of bullish hedge fund positions retreated by 1 in recent months. Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) was in 52 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 63. Our calculations also showed that CCK isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the latest hedge fund action encompassing Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK).

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Lee Ainslie of Maverick Capital

Do Hedge Funds Think CCK Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 52 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -2% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 47 hedge funds with a bullish position in CCK a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Andrew Wellington and Jeff Keswin’s Lyrical Asset Management has the biggest position in Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK), worth close to $312.9 million, comprising 4% of its total 13F portfolio. On Lyrical Asset Management’s heels is David S. Winter and David J. Millstone of 40 North Management, with a $252 million position; the fund has 7.8% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that are bullish consist of Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, John Smith Clark’s Southpoint Capital Advisors and Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position SAYA Management allocated the biggest weight to Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK), around 13.06% of its 13F portfolio. Engle Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 11.5 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CCK.

Due to the fact that Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) has faced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few money managers that slashed their positions entirely last quarter. Interestingly, David Zorub’s Parsifal Capital Management sold off the largest stake of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $47.3 million in stock. Mark Kingdon’s fund, Kingdon Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $22.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds last quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH), Icahn Enterprises LP (NASDAQ:IEP), CBOE Global Markets Inc (NASDAQ:CBOE), Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (NYSE:WSM), Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE:AAP), Packaging Corporation Of America (NYSE:PKG), and Telefonica Brasil SA (NYSE:VIV). This group of stocks’ market valuations match CCK’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ATH 49 1675122 6
IEP 4 12385467 0
CBOE 35 970799 4
WSM 31 730615 -3
AAP 35 899336 1
PKG 26 281022 -5
VIV 5 42334 -4
Average 26.4 2426385 -0.1

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2426 million. That figure was $2139 million in CCK’s case. Athene Holding Ltd. (NYSE:ATH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Icahn Enterprises LP (NASDAQ:IEP) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CCK is 78.8. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately CCK wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CCK were disappointed as the stock returned 5.2% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/30) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.