Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Atkore Inc. (ATKR)

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 third 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 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) based on that data.

Is Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were betting on the stock. The number of long hedge fund bets improved by 1 lately. Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 25. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that ATKR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 25 hedge funds in our database with ATKR holdings at the end of June.

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the new hedge fund action surrounding Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR).

Paul Marshall Marshall Wace

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 4% from the second quarter of 2021. On the other hand, there were a total of 17 hedge funds with a bullish position in ATKR a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) was held by Cardinal Capital, which reported holding $60.3 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $59.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Renaissance Technologies, GLG Partners, and Driehaus Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cardinal Capital allocated the biggest weight to Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR), around 1.45% of its 13F portfolio. PDT Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.35 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATKR.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have been driving this bullishness. Driehaus Capital, managed by Richard Driehaus, assembled the most outsized position in Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR). Driehaus Capital had $17.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP also made a $1.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ATKR positions are Peter Algert’s Algert Global, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, and Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) but similarly valued. These stocks are Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP), SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SAIL), Black Hills Corporation (NYSE:BKH), WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE:WNS), Grand Canyon Education Inc (NASDAQ:LOPE), Skillz Inc. (NYSE:SKLZ), and Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SWX). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ATKR’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
HPP 11 106869 -7
SAIL 24 958527 1
BKH 16 55963 2
WNS 21 220763 1
LOPE 15 135496 -10
SKLZ 18 432232 -2
SWX 10 161665 -9
Average 16.4 295931 -3.4

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $296 million. That figure was $243 million in ATKR’s case. SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SAIL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SWX) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Atkore Inc. (NYSE:ATKR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATKR is 86. 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 returned 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th but still managed to beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ATKR as the stock returned 27% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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.