Is BRX A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million equity holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th, about a month before the elections. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 817 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX) based on those filings.

Is BRX a good stock to buy now? Prominent investors were taking a pessimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets were trimmed by 6 recently. Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX) was in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 28. Our calculations also showed that BRX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To most market participants, hedge funds are viewed as slow, outdated financial tools of the past. While there are over 8000 funds in operation at the moment, Our experts hone in on the bigwigs of this group, about 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people administer most of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by observing their finest equity investments, Insider Monkey has figured out various investment strategies that have historically exceeded Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover 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 and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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. Keeping this in mind let’s review the recent hedge fund action regarding Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -25% from the second quarter of 2020. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BRX a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Millennium Management was the largest shareholder of Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX), with a stake worth $10.5 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Millennium Management was Gillson Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $10 million. Balyasny Asset Management, AQR Capital Management, and Hill Winds Capital were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hill Winds Capital allocated the biggest weight to Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX), around 3.26% of its 13F portfolio. Gillson Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.46 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRX.

Judging by the fact that Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX) has faced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there is a sect of funds that slashed their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group dumped the biggest investment of the 750 funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth about $22 million in stock. Clint Carlson’s fund, Carlson Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $16.4 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds last quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX) but similarly valued. These stocks are Proto Labs Inc (NYSE:PRLB), Inspire Medical Systems, Inc. (NYSE:INSP), UFP Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPI), Semtech Corporation (NASDAQ:SMTC), Alamos Gold Inc (NYSE:AGI), Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL), and Sogou Inc. (NYSE:SOGO). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BRX’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $224 million. That figure was $43 million in BRX’s case. Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Alamos Gold Inc (NYSE:AGI) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Brixmor Property Group Inc (NYSE:BRX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRX is 31.9. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through December 14th and still beat the market by 15.8 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BRX as the stock returned 36% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/14) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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