Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Criteo SA (CRTO)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 866 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO).

Is Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO) undervalued? Investors who are in the know were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets rose by 3 in recent months. Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO) was in 16 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 20. Our calculations also showed that CRTO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 13 hedge funds in our database with CRTO holdings at the end of December.

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are a large number of metrics market participants have at their disposal to assess publicly traded companies. A pair of the most under-the-radar metrics are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top money managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a healthy margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 16 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 23% from the fourth quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CRTO over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Is CRTO A Good Stock To Buy?

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Dendur Capital, managed by Malcolm Levine, holds the biggest position in Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO). Dendur Capital has a $21.5 million position in the stock, comprising 4.3% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is D E Shaw, led by D. E. Shaw, holding a $20 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism contain Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and J. Carlo Cannell’s Cannell Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position VIEX Capital Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO), around 4.68% of its 13F portfolio. Kent Lake Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 4.31 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRTO.

Now, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Dendur Capital, managed by Malcolm Levine, assembled the most outsized position in Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO). Dendur Capital had $21.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. J. Carlo Cannell’s Cannell Capital also initiated a $14.5 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new CRTO investors: Benjamin Natter’s Kent Lake Capital, Eric Singer’s VIEX Capital Advisors, and Ira Unschuld’s Brant Point Investment Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO). We will take a look at Park National Corporation (NYSE:PRK), FB Financial Corporation (NYSE:FBK), Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:MDRX), MediaAlpha, Inc. (NYSE:MAX), EnLink Midstream LLC (NYSE:ENLC), Avanos Medical (NYSE:AVNS), and ModivCare Inc. (NASDAQ:MODV). This group of stocks’ market valuations match CRTO’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
PRK 5 4953 1
FBK 10 82989 1
MDRX 24 282702 2
MAX 15 33320 7
ENLC 11 42185 3
AVNS 13 232180 -1
MODV 14 410878 -3
Average 13.1 155601 1.4

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $156 million. That figure was $126 million in CRTO’s case. Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:MDRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Park National Corporation (NYSE:PRK) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Criteo SA (NASDAQ:CRTO) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRTO is 60.9. 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 28.5% in 2021 through July 23rd and still beat the market by 10.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CRTO, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 22.1% since Q1 (through July 23rd) and outperformed the market as well.

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