Is Sabre Corporation (SABR) Going to Burn These Hedge Funds?

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 867 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR)?

Is Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) undervalued? Prominent investors were getting less optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund bets were cut by 6 in recent months. Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 46. Our calculations also showed that SABR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 37 hedge funds in our database with SABR positions at the end of the second quarter.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Keeping this in mind let’s take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -16% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in SABR over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Fundsmith LLP, managed by Terry Smith, holds the largest position in Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR). Fundsmith LLP has a $237.9 million position in the stock, comprising 0.7% of its 13F portfolio. On Fundsmith LLP’s heels is Paul Reeder and Edward Shapiro of PAR Capital Management, with a $159.6 million position; 3.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other professional money managers with similar optimism contain Jonathan Guo’s Yiheng Capital, Tom Wagner and Ara Cohen’s Knighthead Capital and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Collaborative Holdings Management allocated the biggest weight to Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR), around 9.64% of its 13F portfolio. Hill City Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 9.36 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SABR.

Judging by the fact that Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) has experienced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few hedgies that decided to sell off their full holdings last quarter. At the top of the heap, Andy Redleaf’s Whitebox Advisors sold off the biggest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $18.2 million in stock, and Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $9.6 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 6 funds last quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) but similarly valued. We will take a look at CONMED Corporation (NYSE:CNMD), Veoneer, Inc. (NYSE:VNE), Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB), and Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC). This group of stocks’ market caps match SABR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $285 million. That figure was $878 million in SABR’s case. Veoneer, Inc. (NYSE:VNE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SABR is 69.2. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately SABR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on SABR were disappointed as the stock returned -36.4% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/30) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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