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. Insider Monkey finished processing 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS)?
Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS) was in 44 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 62. ATUS shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 48 hedge funds in our database with ATUS holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that ATUS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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John Armitage of Egerton Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think ATUS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 44 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -8% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 57 hedge funds with a bullish position in ATUS 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 holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS) was held by Soroban Capital Partners, which reported holding $921.8 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Zimmer Partners with a $236.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Pelham Capital, Palestra Capital Management, and Egerton Capital Limited. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Pelham Capital allocated the biggest weight to Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS), around 13.06% of its 13F portfolio. Simcoe Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 12.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ATUS.
Since Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS) has witnessed a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there exists a select few hedgies that slashed their positions entirely in the second quarter. Intriguingly, Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management dumped the biggest stake of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $123.6 million in stock, and Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $41.7 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 4 funds in the second quarter.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS). We will take a look at Natura &Co Holding S.A. (NYSE:NTCO), The Liberty SiriusXM Group (NASDAQ:LSXMA), XPO Logistics Inc (NYSE:XPO), NICE Ltd (NASDAQ:NICE), Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (NYSE:WAB), Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT), and Discovery Inc. (NASDAQ:DISCA). This group of stocks’ market valuations match ATUS’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| NTCO | 5 | 62101 | 1 |
| LSXMA | 43 | 1926503 | 5 |
| XPO | 57 | 3137995 | 17 |
| NICE | 22 | 1035023 | -11 |
| WAB | 46 | 2823758 | 6 |
| TXT | 22 | 962305 | 1 |
| DISCA | 44 | 587867 | -4 |
| Average | 34.1 | 1505079 | 2.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 34.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1505 million. That figure was $3176 million in ATUS’s case. XPO Logistics Inc (NYSE:XPO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Natura &Co Holding S.A. (NYSE:NTCO) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE:ATUS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ATUS is 59.8. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 22.9% in 2021 through October 1st and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately ATUS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ATUS were disappointed as the stock returned -41.4% since the end of June (through 10/1) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Altice Usa Inc. (NYSE:ATUS)
Follow Altice Usa Inc. (NYSE:ATUS)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
