Is Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (LOMA) A Good Stock To Buy?

Is Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is LOMA a good stock to buy? The best stock pickers were reducing their bets on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions retreated by 4 recently. Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 18. Our calculations also showed that LOMA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 10 hedge funds in our database with LOMA positions at the end of the fourth quarter.

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are numerous metrics stock traders employ to assess publicly traded companies. Some of the most under-the-radar metrics are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top fund managers can outpace the broader indices by a healthy amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $24 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action regarding Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -40% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in LOMA over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Redwood Capital Management, managed by Jonathan Kolatch, holds the largest position in Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA). Redwood Capital Management has a $41.2 million position in the stock, comprising 2% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies,  which holds a $4.4 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Howard Marks’s Oaktree Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Redwood Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA), around 2% of its 13F portfolio. Oaktree Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.03 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to LOMA.

Since Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) has faced falling interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedge funds that decided to sell off their entire stakes in the first quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Charles de Vaulx’s International Value Advisers cut the largest investment of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, worth close to $3 million in stock, and James Dondero’s Highland Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.5 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Central Pacific Financial Corp. (NYSE:CPF), Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH), AdvanSix Inc. (NYSE:ASIX), Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:SPWH), Solar Capital Ltd. (NASDAQ:SLRC), Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ:CGEN), and Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI). This group of stocks’ market valuations match LOMA’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 14 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $87 million. That figure was $51 million in LOMA’s case. Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Aspira Women’s Health Inc. (NASDAQ:AWH) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) is even less popular than AWH. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for LOMA is 11. 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 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th but managed to beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on LOMA, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 9.8% since the end of March (through June 25th) and outperformed the market as well.

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

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