Is QIWI A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI).

Is QIWI a good stock to buy now? Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI) was in 9 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 15. Our calculations also showed that QIWI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter. Even if you aren’t comfortable with shorting stocks, you should at least avoid initiating long positions in stocks that are in our short portfolio.

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 15 best blue chip stocks 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. Now we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 29% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 15 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in QIWI a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Renaissance Technologies was the largest shareholder of Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI), with a stake worth $16.6 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Renaissance Technologies was Millennium Management, which amassed a stake valued at $9.2 million. Melqart Asset Management, Platinum Asset Management, and Marshall Wace LLP were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Melqart Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI), around 0.91% of its 13F portfolio. Platinum Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.15 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to QIWI.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, assembled the largest position in Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI). Marshall Wace LLP had $3.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Dril-Quip, Inc. (NYSE:DRQ), Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF), Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWBI), Ultra Clean Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:UCTT), First Busey Corporation (NASDAQ:BUSE), iTeos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITOS), and Redwood Trust, Inc. (NYSE:RWT). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to QIWI’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $109 million. That figure was $48 million in QIWI’s case. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand iTeos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ITOS) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI) is even less popular than ITOS. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for QIWI is 25. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards QIWI. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th but managed to beat the market again by 16.2 percentage points. Unfortunately QIWI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); QIWI investors were disappointed as the stock returned -16.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/8) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in 2020.

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