Is Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (CBRL) A Good Stock To Buy?

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL).

Is CBRL a good stock to buy? Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL) investors should be aware of a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 29. Our calculations also showed that CBRL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind let’s review the fresh hedge fund action regarding Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL).

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

At the end of September, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -25% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CBRL over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group has the number one call position in Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL), worth close to $39.8 million, accounting for less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is AQR Capital Management, led by Cliff Asness, holding a $24.8 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers with similar optimism encompass Israel Englander’s Millennium Management,  Renaissance Technologies and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Blue Grotto Capital allocated the biggest weight to Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL), around 1.83% of its 13F portfolio. Sciencast Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.42 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CBRL.

Since Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL) has faced a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few hedgies that slashed their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, William Harnisch’s Peconic Partners LLC dropped the biggest position of all the hedgies watched by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $11.4 million in stock. Steve Cohen’s fund, Point72 Asset Management, also dumped its stock, about $5.3 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 7 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL). These stocks are Turning Point Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TPTX), Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB), SITE Centers Corp. (NYSE:SITC), Clover Health Investments, Corp. (NASDAQ:CLOV), Sabra Health Care REIT Inc (NASDAQ:SBRA), Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE), and PJT Partners Inc (NYSE:PJT). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to CBRL’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $184 million. That figure was $107 million in CBRL’s case. Turning Point Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TPTX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sabra Health Care REIT Inc (NASDAQ:SBRA) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRL) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CBRL is 69.7. 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. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 29.6% in 2021 and beat the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately CBRL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CBRL were disappointed as the stock returned -7.1% since the end of September (through 12/31) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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

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