Hedge Funds Are Crazy About At Home Group Inc. (HOME)

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the second quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME) based on that data and determine whether they were really smart about the stock.

At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME) was in 27 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 32. HOME has seen an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. There were 14 hedge funds in our database with HOME positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that HOME isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In the financial world there are many methods investors have at their disposal to analyze publicly traded companies. A pair of the most underrated methods are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best hedge fund managers can outperform the market by a superb amount (see the details here).

Izzy Englander of MILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT

Israel Englander of Millennium Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, legal marijuana is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like “the Starbucks of cannabis” to identify the next tenbagger. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME).

How are hedge funds trading At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME)?

Heading into the third quarter of 2020, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 93% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in HOME a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Is HOME A Good Stock To Buy?

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Clifford A. Sosin’s CAS Investment Partners has the most valuable position in At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME), worth close to $67.7 million, comprising 7.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Michael Zimmerman of Prentice Capital Management, with a $31.3 million position; 11.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish comprise Vadim Rubinchik’s Brightlight Capital, Leonard Green’s Leonard Green & Partners and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Prentice Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME), around 11.55% of its 13F portfolio. CAS Investment Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 7.29 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HOME.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Leonard Green & Partners, managed by Leonard Green, established the most outsized position in At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME). Leonard Green & Partners had $9.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jeff Osher’s No Street Capital also made a $6.5 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, Elise Di Vincenzo Crumbine’s Stormborn Capital Management, and Chet Kapoor’s Tenzing Global Investors.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME). We will take a look at American Vanguard Corp. (NYSE:AVD), Harpoon Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HARP), Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:ARLP), Rosetta Stone Inc (NYSE:RST), US Concrete Inc (NASDAQ:USCR), Donegal Group Inc (NASDAQ:DGICA), and Aeglea BioTherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AGLE). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble HOME’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
AVD 10 10023 2
HARP 11 65257 0
ARLP 4 20323 0
RST 21 119001 -1
USCR 9 20183 -3
DGICA 4 10361 -1
AGLE 19 198699 6
Average 11.1 63407 0.4

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $63 million. That figure was $170 million in HOME’s case. Rosetta Stone Inc (NYSE:RST) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:ARLP) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HOME is 85.3. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 21.3% in 2020 through September 25th but still managed to beat the market by 17.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on HOME as the stock returned 117.9% since the end of June and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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