Hedge Funds Heading for Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT)’s Exits

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Seeing as Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) has experienced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of money managers that elected to cut their entire stakes last quarter. Intriguingly, Curtis Macnguyen’s Ivory Capital (Investment Mgmt) dumped the biggest position of the 700 funds followed by Insider Monkey, comprising a $91.4 million position of call options underlying shares of AMAT, while Matthew Mark’s Jet Capital Investors was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $43.2 million worth of shares. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 11 funds last quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT). These stocks are Xcel Energy Inc (NYSE:XEL), The Progressive Corporation (NYSE:PGR), Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX), and T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TROW). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble AMAT’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
XEL 10 269824 0
PGR 26 530456 -1
BAX 51 5366495 12
TROW 26 516235 -3

As you can see these stocks had an average of 28.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.67 billion. That figure was slightly lower, $1.60 billion in AMAT’s case. Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Xcel Energy Inc (NYSE:XEL) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) is more popular among hedge funds, though it has far less money invested in that BAX does. Considering that hedge fund sentiment is falling hard, while rising just as quickly in BAX, that may be the better stock to consider a long position in at this point.

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