Is AAWW Stock A Buy or Sell?

Is Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is AAWW stock a buy? Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW) has seen an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW) was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 27. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with AAWW positions at the end of the third quarter. Our calculations also showed that AAWW isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

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At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, the House passed a landmark bill decriminalizing marijuana. So, we are checking out this under the radar cannabis stock right now. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to buy to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. 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 website. Now we’re going to take a look at the recent hedge fund action surrounding Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW).

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

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 30% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 15 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in AAWW a year ago. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW) was held by Greenlight Capital, which reported holding $94.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Maple Rock Capital with a $26.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Fisher Asset Management, Royce & Associates, and Hill City Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hill City Capital allocated the biggest weight to Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW), around 8.68% of its 13F portfolio. Brightline Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 6.17 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AAWW.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Hill City Capital, managed by Herbert Frazier, established the biggest position in Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW). Hill City Capital had $16 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Steven Ng and Andrew Mitchell’s Ophir Asset Management also initiated a $15.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Prelude Capital (previously Springbok Capital), Stuart J. Zimmer’s Zimmer Partners, and Parvinder Thiara’s Athanor Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW). We will take a look at ACM Research, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACMR), Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:INO), CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI), Holly Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:HEP), 908 Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:MASS), Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated (NASDAQ:SYKE), and Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYGN). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to AAWW’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $269 million. That figure was $301 million in AAWW’s case. 908 Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:MASS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Holly Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:HEP) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAWW) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AAWW 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks returned 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st but still managed to beat the market by 0.4 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on AAWW as the stock returned 12.3% since the end of December (through 4/1) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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