Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (WSC)

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) in this article.

WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest of late. WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) was in 47 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was 36. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that WSC 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.

Ricky Sandler's tsop 10 stock picks

Ricky Sandler of Eminence Capital

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation, which is why we are checking out this inflation play. We go through lists like 10 best gold stocks to buy to identify promising stocks. 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 peek at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 47 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 34% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in WSC over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Eminence Capital, managed by Ricky Sandler, holds the largest position in WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC). Eminence Capital has a $274.3 million position in the stock, comprising 3.4% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Permian Investment Partners, led by Alex Duran and Scott Hendrickson, holding a $125.1 million position; 15.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions comprise Richard Scott Greeder’s Broad Bay Capital, David Rosen’s Rubric Capital Management and Zach Schreiber’s Point State Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 0 allocated the biggest weight to WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC), around 15.58% of its 13F portfolio. 0 is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 15.28 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to WSC.

Now, key hedge funds have jumped into WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) headfirst. Point State Capital, managed by Zach Schreiber, established the largest position in WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC). Point State Capital had $59.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Boucai’s Newbrook Capital Advisors also initiated a $33.8 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new WSC investors: Frank Fu’s CaaS Capital, Philip Hilal’s Clearfield Capital, and Louis Bacon’s Moore Global Investments.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (NYSE:AMG), Dada Nexus Limited (NASDAQ:DADA), Landstar System, Inc. (NASDAQ:LSTR), Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS), Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT), Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ:PAAS), and YETI Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YETI). This group of stocks’ market values resemble WSC’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
AMG 26 725024 -1
DADA 21 157587 -4
LSTR 15 166365 -3
IONS 23 541031 -5
ESLT 3 50211 -2
PAAS 27 352324 0
YETI 30 159366 11
Average 20.7 307415 -0.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $307 million. That figure was $1271 million in WSC’s case. YETI Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:YETI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for WSC is 90. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and still beat the market by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately WSC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on WSC were disappointed as the stock returned 0.2% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/18) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

Follow Willscot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ:WSC)

Suggested Articles:

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