Here’s Why Upslope Capital Sold its Ritchie Bros. (RBA) Position

Upslope Capital Management, an investment management firm, published its third-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A quarterly portfolio net return of -0.2% was recorded by the fund for the third quarter of 2021, compared to the S&P Midcap 400 ETF and the HFRX Equity Hedge Index that delivered -1.8% and +1.3% gains for the same period. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their best picks for 2021.

Upslope Capital Management, in its Q3 2021 investor letter, mentioned Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE: RBA) and discussed its stance on the firm. Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated is a Burnaby, Canada-based auction company with a $7.4 billion market capitalization. RBA delivered a -3.12% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 8.12%. The stock closed at $67.38 per share on October 18, 2021.

Here is what Upslope Capital Management has to say about Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated in its Q3 2021 investor letter:

Ritchie Bros. (RBA) is the world’s leading auctioneer/operator of marketplaces for used heavy equipment. RBA thrived in the early COVID days, but has faced a tough 12 months due to cyclical headwinds (tight equipment market = lower volumes). While the headwinds will abate, management messaging, turnover, and capital allocation decisions have become increasingly concerning, in my view, leading me to sell the position.”

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Based on our calculations, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE: RBA) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. RBA was in 22 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 19 funds in the previous quarter. Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE: RBA) delivered a 12.51% return in the past 3 months.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

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