Is Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (HPP) A Good Stock To Buy?

You probably know from experience that there is not as much information on small-cap companies as there is on large companies. Of course, this makes it really hard and difficult for individual investors to make proper and accurate analysis of certain small-cap companies. However, well-known and successful hedge fund investors like Carl Icahn and George Soros hold the necessary resources and abilities to conduct an extensive stock analysis on small-cap stocks, which enable them to make millions of dollars by identifying potential winners within the small-cap galaxy of stocks. This represents the main reason why Insider Monkey takes notice of the hedge fund activity in these overlooked stocks.

Is Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP) an excellent stock to buy now? The best stock pickers are actually taking a pessimistic view. The number of long hedge fund positions that are disclosed in regulatory 13F filings contracted by6 lately. HPPwas in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 23 hedge funds in our database with HPP positions at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund (NYSE:PCI), Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX), and Proofpoint Inc (NASDAQ:PFPT) to gather more data points.

Follow Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. (NYSE:HPP)

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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Now, let’s go over the new action regarding Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP).

What does the smart money think about Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a slump of 26% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 17 hedge funds with a bullish position in HPP at the beginning of this year. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

HedgeFundSentimentChart

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Farallon Capital has the biggest position in Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP), worth close to $66.4 million, corresponding to 1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by D E Shaw, with a $29.6 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Eduardo Abush’s Waterfront Capital Partners. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Now that we’ve mentioned the most bullish investors, let’s also take a look at some funds that got rid of their entire stakes in the stock during the third quarter. Interestingly, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group got rid of the biggest stake of all the investors monitored by Insider Monkey, worth close to $12.8 million in stock, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $11.4 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP) but similarly valued. We will take a look at PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund (NYSE:PCI), Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX), Proofpoint Inc (NASDAQ:PFPT), and Zebra Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:ZBRA). This group of stocks’ market values match HPP’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
PCI 3 7951 -2
RAX 31 843350 0
PFPT 27 220468 7
ZBRA 17 533933 -2

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $401 million. That figure was $189 million in HPP’s case. Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund (NYSE:PCI) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Hudson Pacific Properties Inc (NYSE:HPP) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard RAX might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.