Hedge Funds Are Warming Up To Celsius Holdings, Inc. (CELH)

Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of June. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic was previously 19. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. CELH has seen an increase in hedge fund interest in recent months. There were 15 hedge funds in our database with CELH holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that CELH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We have been able to outperform the passive index funds by tracking the moves of corporate insiders and hedge funds, and we believe small investors can benefit a lot from reading hedge fund investor letters and 13F filings.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, plant based food market is expected to explode 100-fold by 2050, so we are checking out this under-the-radar stock. We go through lists like the 10 best growth stocks to buy 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 we’re going to take a glance at the new hedge fund action regarding Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH).

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

At the end of June, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 33% from the first quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 10 hedge funds with a bullish position in CELH a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital has the number one position in Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH), worth close to $99.2 million, amounting to 1.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Paul Marshall and Ian Wace of Marshall Wace LLP, with a $43.5 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Driehaus Capital allocated the biggest weight to Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH), around 1.31% of its 13F portfolio. Pinz Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.94 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CELH.

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. PDT Partners, managed by Peter Muller, established the most valuable position in Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH). PDT Partners had $5.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Frank Fu’s CaaS Capital also initiated a $4.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners, Matthew L Pinz’s Pinz Capital, and The Motley Fool’s 1623 Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH). We will take a look at Acadia Healthcare Company Inc (NASDAQ:ACHC), Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS), MGM Growth Properties LLC (NYSE:MGP), eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI), Owl Rock Capital Corporation (NYSE:ORCC), Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:PAC), and Houlihan Lokey Inc (NYSE:HLI). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to CELH’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $358 million. That figure was $233 million in CELH’s case. Acadia Healthcare Company Inc (NASDAQ:ACHC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:PAC) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Celsius Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CELH) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CELH is 66. 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 October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CELH as the stock returned 23.9% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/22) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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