Is CLDR Stock A Buy or Sell?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 887 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of December 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) based on that data.

Is CLDR stock a buy? Prominent investors were getting less optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund positions shrunk by 2 lately. Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 33. Our calculations also showed that CLDR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we heard that billionaire Peter Thiel is backing this psychedelic-drug startup. So, we are taking a closer look at this space. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR).

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

At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -6% from the third quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CLDR over the last 22 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) was held by Icahn Capital LP, which reported holding $727.9 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by RGM Capital with a $132 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Royce & Associates, and Renaissance Technologies. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position RGM Capital allocated the biggest weight to Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR), around 5.76% of its 13F portfolio. AIGH Investment Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 5.65 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CLDR.

Seeing as Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) has faced falling interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there lies a certain “tier” of funds that slashed their positions entirely by the end of the fourth quarter. Intriguingly, Mark Coe’s Intrinsic Edge Capital sold off the biggest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $7 million in stock, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $5.7 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 2 funds by the end of the fourth quarter.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR). These stocks are QTS Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:QTS), Daqo New Energy Corp (NYSE:DQ), FTI Consulting, Inc. (NYSE:FCN), Shell Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:SHLX), nVent Electric plc (NYSE:NVT), National Beverage Corp. (NASDAQ:FIZZ), and Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM). All of these stocks’ market caps match CLDR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $277 million. That figure was $1005 million in CLDR’s case. nVent Electric plc (NYSE:NVT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Shell Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:SHLX) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE:CLDR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CLDR is 77.2. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 gained 12.2% in 2021 through April 12th and beat the market again by 1.5 percentage points. Unfortunately CLDR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CLDR were disappointed as the stock returned -9.6% since the end of December (through 4/12) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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