Is EXR Stock A Buy or Sell?

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million 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 December 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 887 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) based on those filings.

Is EXR stock a buy? Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 30. EXR investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment of late. There were 27 hedge funds in our database with EXR positions at the end of the third quarter. Our calculations also showed that EXR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

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

At Q4’s end, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 7% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EXR over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) was held by Citadel Investment Group, which reported holding $97.6 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Zimmer Partners with a $86.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included D E Shaw, Adage Capital Management, and Intrinsic Edge Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Zimmer Partners allocated the biggest weight to Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR), around 1.28% of its 13F portfolio. Capital Growth Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.99 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EXR.

Consequently, key money managers have jumped into Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) headfirst. Capital Growth Management, managed by Ken Heebner, established the largest position in Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR). Capital Growth Management had $9.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP also made a $8.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EXR positions are Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Leidos Holdings Inc (NYSE:LDOS), Pool Corporation (NASDAQ:POOL), Telefonica Brasil SA (NYSE:VIV), FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC), Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FICO), Duke Realty Corporation (NYSE:DRE), and NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to EXR’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 27 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $547 million. That figure was $299 million in EXR’s case. FMC Corporation (NYSE:FMC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Telefonica Brasil SA (NYSE:VIV) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Extra Space Storage, Inc. (NYSE:EXR) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EXR is 64.4. 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 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 still beat the market by 1.5 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on EXR as the stock returned 21.1% since the end of Q4 (through 4/12) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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