Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About NXP Semiconductors NV (NXPI) Anymore

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of June 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI).

NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) was in 52 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 93. NXPI investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest of late. There were 53 hedge funds in our database with NXPI positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that NXPI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are assumed to be slow, old investment tools of years past. While there are more than 8000 funds trading today, Our researchers look at the top tier of this club, around 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors watch over most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by watching their top picks, Insider Monkey has determined many investment strategies that have historically defeated the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

John Petry Sessa Capital

John Petry of Sessa Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. 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. Now let’s take a glance at the latest hedge fund action surrounding NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI).

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 52 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -2% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 67 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in NXPI a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) was held by Fisher Asset Management, which reported holding $212.9 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by First Pacific Advisors LLC with a $149.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Citadel Investment Group, Sessa Capital, and Holocene Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Mountain Road Advisors allocated the biggest weight to NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI), around 8.23% of its 13F portfolio. Breakline Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 8.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NXPI.

Because NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) has witnessed a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there is a sect of hedge funds who sold off their entire stakes heading into Q3. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management dumped the largest stake of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $158.2 million in stock, and Bijan Modanlou, Joseph Bou-Saba, and Jayaveera Kodali’s Alta Park Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $60.5 million worth. These bearish behaviors are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds heading into Q3.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) but similarly valued. These stocks are Honda Motor Co Ltd (NYSE:HMC), Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Banco Bradesco SA (NYSE:BBD), DocuSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX), and Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV). This group of stocks’ market caps match NXPI’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
HMC 10 374945 -2
GPN 66 4858185 4
TWTR 89 6031488 -18
BBD 18 362308 -1
DOCU 58 4610698 -2
FCX 76 3869626 8
ABEV 18 301004 0
Average 47.9 2915465 -1.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 47.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2915 million. That figure was $1337 million in NXPI’s case. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Honda Motor Co Ltd (NYSE:HMC) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NXPI is 47.4. 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 NXPI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on NXPI were disappointed as the stock returned -6% 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.

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