Is Schneider National, Inc. (SNDR) A Good Stock To Buy?

In this article we will take a look at whether hedge funds think Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) is a good investment right now. We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, unconventional data sources, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.

Is SNDR a good stock to buy? Investors who are in the know were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets went up by 1 recently. Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 22. Our calculations also showed that SNDR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 19 hedge funds in our database with SNDR positions at the end of the first quarter.

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Ian Wace Marshall Wace

Ian Wace of Marshall WaceIan Wace

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, plant based food market is expected to explode 100-fold by 2050, so we are checking out this under-the-radar stock. We go through lists like the 10 best growth stocks to buy 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. 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 homepage. Now we’re going to take a look at the latest hedge fund action encompassing Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR).

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

Heading into the third quarter of 2021, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from the first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SNDR a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, AQR Capital Management held the most valuable stake in Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR), which was worth $53.9 million at the end of the second quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $12.3 million worth of shares. Royce & Associates, Arrowstreet Capital, and Citadel Investment Group 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 AlphaCrest Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR), around 0.18% of its 13F portfolio. Engineers Gate Manager is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.1 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SNDR.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, initiated the biggest position in Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR). ExodusPoint Capital had $2.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Renaissance Technologies, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, and Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) but similarly valued. These stocks are Hancock Whitney Corporation (NASDAQ:HWC), Digitalbridge Group Inc (NYSE:DBRG), Editas Medicine, Inc. (NASDAQ:EDIT), Eastern Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBC), Denbury Inc. (NYSE:DEN), Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SWX), and Southwestern Energy Company (NYSE:SWN). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to SNDR’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
HWC 22 127792 7
DBRG 29 686986 4
EDIT 23 506626 -1
EBC 20 115205 6
DEN 29 996614 -1
SWX 19 145257 -4
SWN 27 257726 5
Average 24.1 405172 2.3

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $405 million. That figure was $122 million in SNDR’s case. Digitalbridge Group Inc (NYSE:DBRG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SWX) is the least popular one with only 19 bullish hedge fund positions. Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SNDR is 38.3. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on SNDR as the stock returned 14.1% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/22) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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