Is Republic Services, Inc. (RSG) A Good Stock To Buy?

Since Republic Services, Inc. (NYSE:RSG) has faced declining sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there was a specific group of money managers that decided to sell off their positions entirely heading into Q4. Interestingly, Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management cut the largest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, worth close to $45.1 million in stock. Malcolm Fairbairn’s fund, Ascend Capital, also said goodbye to its stock, about $32.5 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Republic Services, Inc. (NYSE:RSG). We will take a look at Coca-Cola FEMSA, S.A.B. de C.V. (ADR) (NYSE:KOF), Hess Corp. (NYSE:HES), Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN), and Tenaris S.A. (ADR) (NYSE:TS). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to RSG’s market valuation.

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 $953 million. That figure was $374 million in RSG’s case. Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Coca-Cola FEMSA, S.A.B. de C.V. (ADR) (NYSE:KOF) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Republic Services, Inc. (NYSE:RSG) is not the most popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal, but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard MJN might be a better candidate to consider a long position.