Is Tegna Inc (TGNA) A Good Stock To Buy?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 821 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, near the height of the coronavirus market crash. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA) based on that data.

Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA) investors should be aware of an increase in hedge fund interest recently. Our calculations also showed that TGNA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

According to most stock holders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old financial tools of yesteryear. While there are over 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our researchers hone in on the crème de la crème of this group, around 850 funds. These investment experts orchestrate the lion’s share of the smart money’s total asset base, and by observing their matchless stock picks, Insider Monkey has figured out a few investment strategies that have historically outperformed the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy surpassed the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out trades like this one as well as this tiny lithium play. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Keeping this in mind let’s take a peek at the key hedge fund action encompassing Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA).

How are hedge funds trading Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 53% from the fourth quarter of 2019. On the other hand, there were a total of 26 hedge funds with a bullish position in TGNA a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, HG Vora Capital Management, managed by Parag Vora, holds the number one position in Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). HG Vora Capital Management has a $162.9 million position in the stock, comprising 15.9% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Ariel Investments, led by John W. Rogers, holding a $54.2 million position; 1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism include Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management, Carl Tiedemann and Michael Tiedemann’s TIG Advisors and Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis’s Canyon Capital Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position HG Vora Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA), around 15.88% of its 13F portfolio. Litespeed Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 5.94 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to TGNA.

As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. TIG Advisors, managed by Carl Tiedemann and Michael Tiedemann, established the largest position in Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). TIG Advisors had $27.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Joshua Friedman and Mitchell Julis’s Canyon Capital Advisors also initiated a $23.5 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new TGNA positions are Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management, and Joseph Samuels’s Islet Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA). These stocks are Parsley Energy Inc (NYSE:PE), FireEye Inc (NASDAQ:FEYE), BRF SA (NYSE:BRFS), and John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to TGNA’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 25.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $175 million. That figure was $377 million in TGNA’s case. Parsley Energy Inc (NYSE:PE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Tegna Inc (NYSE:TGNA) 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. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately TGNA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on TGNA were disappointed as the stock returned 7.9% during the same time period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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