Is ULH A Good Stock To Buy Now?

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH).

Is ULH a good stock to buy now? Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) has experienced an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 13. Our calculations also showed that ULH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 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.

In the eyes of most market participants, hedge funds are assumed to be worthless, outdated financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds with their doors open at present, Our researchers choose to focus on the top tier of this group, about 850 funds. It is estimated that this group of investors shepherd the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total asset base, and by tailing their matchless picks, Insider Monkey has come up with a number of investment strategies that have historically exceeded the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy outrun the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Now we’re going to view the recent hedge fund action surrounding Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 12 hedge funds with a bullish position in ULH a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) was held by Royce & Associates, which reported holding $9.2 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Lafitte Capital Management with a $4.7 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Renaissance Technologies, and Winton Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Lafitte Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH), around 5.05% of its 13F portfolio. Zebra Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.33 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ULH.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have jumped into Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) headfirst. Lafitte Capital Management, managed by Bryant Regan, established the most valuable position in Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH). Lafitte Capital Management had $4.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Roger Ibbotson’s Zebra Capital Management also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) but similarly valued. These stocks are iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT), UMH Properties, Inc (NYSE:UMH), ConnectOne Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:CNOB), Trueblue Inc (NYSE:TBI), National Energy Services Reunited Corp. (NASDAQ:NESR), MarineMax, Inc. (NYSE:HZO), and XBiotech Inc. (NASDAQ:XBIT). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble ULH’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $39 million. That figure was $20 million in ULH’s case. iHeartMedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:IHRT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand XBiotech Inc. (NASDAQ:XBIT) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Universal Logistics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULH) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ULH is 46.7. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and surpassed the market again by 16.2 percentage points. Unfortunately ULH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ULH investors were disappointed as the stock returned 6.2% since the end of September (through 12/8) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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