Hedge Funds Aren’t Crazy About Vantiv Inc (VNTV) Anymore

Legendary investors such as Leon Cooperman and Seth Klarman earn enormous amounts of money for themselves and their investors by doing in-depth research on small-cap stocks that big brokerage houses don’t publish. Small cap stocks -especially when they are screened well- can generate substantial outperformance versus a boring index fund. That’s why we analyze the activity of those elite funds in these small-cap stocks. In the following paragraphs, we analyze Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV) from the perspective of those elite funds.

Is Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV) worth your attention right now? Hedge funds are becoming less hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased by 2 recently and there were 27 investors long the stock at the end of September. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as SCANA Corporation (NYSE:SCG), ServiceNow Inc (NYSE:NOW), and AMETEK, Inc. (NYSE:AME) to gather more data points.

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.

Hedge fund activity in Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV)

At Q3’s end, a total of 27 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a decline of 7% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Ric Dillon’s Diamond Hill Capital has the number one position in Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV), worth close to $226.3 million, amounting to 1.4% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Alyeska Investment Group, managed by Anand Parekh, which holds a $58.6 million position. Some other members of the smart money that hold long positions encompass Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’ Alkeon Capital Management, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management.

Due to the fact that Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV) has witnessed falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there is a sect of fund managers who were dropping their positions entirely in the third quarter. Interestingly, Ben Gambill’s Tiger Eye Capital cut the biggest investment of the 700 funds followed by Insider Monkey, worth about $28.2 million in stock. Jim Simons’ fund, Renaissance Technologies, also dropped its stock, about $25.4 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV) but similarly valued. These stocks are SCANA Corporation (NYSE:SCG), ServiceNow Inc (NYSE:NOW), AMETEK, Inc. (NYSE:AME), and Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to VNTV’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $778 million. That figure was $600 million in VNTV’s case. Regions Financial Corporation (NYSE:RF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand SCANA Corporation (NYSE:SCG) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Vantiv Inc (NYSE:VNTV) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard RF might be a better candidate to consider a long position.

Disclosure: None