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 fourth 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 Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) based on that data.
Is Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) the right pick for your portfolio? Hedge funds were in a bearish mood. The number of long hedge fund positions went down by 5 recently. Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 59. Our calculations also showed that GLPI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.
Parag Vora of HG Vora Capital Management
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. With all of this in mind let’s analyze the key hedge fund action regarding Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI).
Do Hedge Funds Think GLPI Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -15% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards GLPI over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Jeffrey Gates’s Gates Capital Management has the biggest position in Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI), worth close to $165.6 million, corresponding to 6% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Cardinal Capital, led by Amy Minella, holding a $82 million position; 2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers with similar optimism contain Parag Vora’s HG Vora Capital Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Stuart J. Zimmer’s Zimmer Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Gates Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI), around 6.03% of its 13F portfolio. HG Vora Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.97 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GLPI.
Due to the fact that Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) has faced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there exists a select few money managers who sold off their full holdings heading into Q2. It’s worth mentioning that John Khoury’s Long Pond Capital dumped the largest position of the 750 funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $100.7 million in stock, and Amit Nitin Doshi’s Harbor Spring Capital was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $36.1 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 5 funds heading into Q2.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI). These stocks are Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC), Penumbra Inc (NYSE:PEN), American Financial Group (NYSE:AFG), MGM Growth Properties LLC (NYSE:MGP), Aspen Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AZPN), Paylocity Holding Corp (NASDAQ:PCTY), and Paysafe Limited (NYSE:PSFE). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to GLPI’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| HSIC | 32 | 1262137 | -1 |
| PEN | 27 | 399617 | 7 |
| AFG | 21 | 191538 | -3 |
| MGP | 34 | 592102 | 5 |
| AZPN | 32 | 1158081 | 3 |
| PCTY | 22 | 539146 | -4 |
| PSFE | 41 | 1326259 | 41 |
| Average | 29.9 | 781269 | 6.9 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $781 million. That figure was $595 million in GLPI’s case. Paysafe Limited (NYSE:PSFE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand American Financial Group (NYSE:AFG) is the least popular one with only 21 bullish hedge fund positions. Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc (NASDAQ:GLPI) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GLPI is 31.7. 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and beat the market by 6.7 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on GLPI, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 12% since the end of Q1 (through July 9th) and outperformed the market.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
