Is Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (RHP) A Good Stock To Buy?

Legendary investors such as Leon Cooperman and Seth Klarman earn enormous amounts of money for themselves and their investors by doing in-depth research on small-cap stocks that big brokerage houses don’t publish. Small cap stocks -especially when they are screened well- can generate substantial outperformance versus a boring index fund. That’s why we analyze the activity of those successful funds in these small-cap stocks. In the following paragraphs, we analyze Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP) from the perspective of those successful funds.

Hedge fund interest in Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. RHP was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. This is usually a negative indicator. At the end of this article we will also compare RHP to other stocks including WPX Energy Inc (NYSE:WPX), Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB), and EnerSys (NYSE:ENS) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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Hedge fund activity in Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, unchanged from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in RHP over the last 5 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors has the biggest position in Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP), worth close to $211.5 million, amounting to 1.4% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Gilchrist Berg’s Water Street Capital, which holds a $57.7 million position; 2.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Jay Petschek and Steven Major’s Corsair Capital Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Bernard Selz’s Selz Capital. 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.

Due to the fact that Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there were a few money managers that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Bruce Kovner’s Caxton Associates LP got rid of the biggest position of all the investors tracked by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $1.3 million in stock, and Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $0.4 million worth of shares.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP). We will take a look at WPX Energy Inc (NYSE:WPX), Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB), EnerSys (NYSE:ENS), and Masimo Corporation (NASDAQ:MASI). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to RHP’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $255 million. That figure was $352 million in RHP’s case. WPX Energy Inc (NYSE:WPX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Associated Banc Corp (NYSE:ASB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT) (NYSE:RHP) 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 WPX might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None