Is Capital City Bank Group (CCBG) A Good Stock To Buy Now?

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. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 817 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, about a month before the elections. In this article we look at what those investors think of Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG).

Is Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) a good sock to buy now? Investors who are in the know were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 3 lately. Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 5. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CCBG 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.

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 was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 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’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 13% through November 17th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

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. With all of this in mind let’s analyze the recent hedge fund action surrounding Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG).

How are hedge funds trading Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 100% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CCBG over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG), which was worth $4.8 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Citadel Investment Group which amassed $0.5 million worth of shares. Royce & Associates, Millennium Management, and Arrowstreet 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 Renaissance Technologies allocated the biggest weight to Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG), around 0.0048% of its 13F portfolio. Royce & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.0034 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CCBG.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the biggest position in Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG). Millennium Management had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new CCBG position is Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Qudian Inc. (NYSE:QD), Great Panther Mining Ltd (NYSE:GPL), The Container Store Group Inc (NYSE:TCS), Source Capital, Inc. (NYSE:SOR), Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKTS), Heritage-Crystal Clean, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCCI), and UFP Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPT). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble CCBG’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $46 million. That figure was $6 million in CCBG’s case. The Container Store Group Inc (NYSE:TCS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Source Capital, Inc. (NYSE:SOR) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Capital City Bank Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCBG) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CCBG is 54.7. 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 November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CCBG as the stock returned 29% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/27) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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