Is Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) a Smart Long-term Buy?

Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund, a Memphis-based fund under Southeastern Asset Management, recently released its Q3 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 22.2% for the quarter, outperforming its benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index which returned 4.93% in the same quarter. You should check out Longleaf Partners’ top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.

In the Q3 2020 Investor Letter, Longleaf Partners highlighted a few stocks and Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) is one of them. Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) is a real estate investment trust company. Year-to-date, Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) stock lost 33% and on December 22nd it had a closing price of $9.36. Here is what Longleaf Partners said:

“Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) (-13%, -0.64%) was the only detractor of note in the quarter. New York City is just beginning to emerge from COVID, so its office buildings remain only about 10% full, and the Empire State Building Observatory – while outperforming other observatories in the area by a significant margin – is still well off its 2019 levels due to a dramatic fall-off in tourist traffic. It will take time for the company to rebound to full strength, but a dire scenario is already priced in, and our value in the mid-teens per share assumes a slow ramp back. The good news is that ESRT has a best in class balance sheet, and our great CEO partner Tony Malkin is poised to go on offense in a market that is ripe with opportunities.”

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In Q3 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) stock decreased by about 11% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers don’t believe in ESRT’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE:ESRT) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds

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 10 most profitable companies in the world 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:

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