Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (JEC) Anymore

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from the more than 700 13F filings issued by the successful hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC) .

Is Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC) the right pick for your portfolio? Prominent investors are selling. The number of bullish hedge fund investments dropped by 1 lately. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with JEC holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare JEC to other stocks including The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTI), Apollo Global Management LLC (NYSE:APO), and FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FTI) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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Keeping this in mind, let’s review the key action surrounding Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC).

What does the smart money think about Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a drop of 6% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards JEC over the last 5 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

HedgeFundSentimentChart

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management has the most valuable position in Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC), worth close to $67.6 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Asset Management, with a $22.7 million position; 0.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions consist of Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates and Jonathan Barrett and Paul Segal’s Luminus Management. We should note that Luminus Management is among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Judging by the fact that Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC) has sustained falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of hedgies that elected to cut their full holdings heading into Q4. Interestingly, Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP got rid of the biggest investment of all the investors followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $13.7 million in call options, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $2.5 million worth of shares.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC). These stocks are The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTI), Apollo Global Management LLC (NYSE:APO), FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FTI), and Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:TYL). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to JEC’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
ULTI 18 155448 3
APO 21 272595 3
FTI 42 1021252 5
TYL 19 245181 -2

As you can see these stocks had an average of 25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $424 million. That figure was $148 million in JEC’s case. FMC Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FTI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Ultimate Software Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTI) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Jacobs Engineering Group Inc (NYSE:JEC) is even less popular than ULTI. Considering that hedge funds aren’t fond of this stock in relation to other companies analyzed in this article, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and understand why the smart money isn’t behind this stock. This isn’t necessarily bad news. Although it is possible that hedge funds may think the stock is overpriced and view the stock as a short candidate, they may not be very familiar with the bullish thesis. In either case more research is warranted.

Disclosure: none.