Is Red Rock Resorts (RRR) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

Diamond Hill Capital, an investment management firm, published its “Diamond Hill Small Cap Fund” second-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The portfolio performed roughly in line with the Russell 2000® Index in the quarter, delivering solid absolute results and remaining ahead of the benchmark year to date. You can take a look at the fund’s top 5 holdings to have an idea about their top bets for 2021.

In the Q2 2021 investor letter of Diamond Hill Capital, the fund mentioned Red Rock Resorts, Inc. (NASDAQ: RRR) and discussed its stance on the firm. Red Rock Resorts, Inc. is a Las Vegas, Nevada-based casino and entertainment properties company with a $4.9 billion market capitalization. RRR delivered a 70.73% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are up by 149.27%. The stock closed at $42.75 per share on September 10, 2021.

Here is what Diamond Hill Capital has to say about Red Rock Resorts, Inc. in its Q2 2021 investor letter:

“On an individual holdings’ basis, top contributors to return included Red Rock Resorts, a casino operator controlling over half the Las Vegas locals market. Red Rock is benefiting from pent-up demand, but it also executed well through the pandemic— controlling costs by selectively reopening facilities, improving its balance sheet and delivering record margins.”

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Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock.com

Based on our calculations, Red Rock Resorts, Inc. (NASDAQ: RRR) was not able to clinch a spot in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. RRR was in 26 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the first half of 2021, compared to 28 funds in the previous quarter. Red Rock Resorts, Inc. (NASDAQ: RRR) delivered a -4.36% return in the past 3 months.

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. 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 115 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.

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