We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 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. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) based on that data.
Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that ODC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare ODC to other stocks including Ucommune International Ltd (NASDAQ:UK), Resonant Inc. (NASDAQ:RESN), and ACNB Corporation (NASDAQ:ACNB) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors
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Do Hedge Funds Think ODC Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q1’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 4 hedge funds with a bullish position in ODC a year ago. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, GAMCO Investors, managed by Mario Gabelli, holds the largest position in Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC). GAMCO Investors has a $16.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $12.9 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers with similar optimism contain Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Thomas Bailard’s Bailard Inc and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position GAMCO Investors allocated the biggest weight to Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC), around 0.14% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.02 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ODC.
We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Arrowstreet Capital. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because only one of the 800+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock (that fund was Millennium Management).
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Ucommune International Ltd (NASDAQ:UK), Resonant Inc. (NASDAQ:RESN), ACNB Corporation (NASDAQ:ACNB), NuCana plc (NASDAQ:NCNA), Atossa Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATOS), Clever Leaves Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CLVR), and Taiwan Liposome Company, Ltd. (NASDAQ:TLC). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to ODC’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 4 | 705 | 1 |
| RESN | 6 | 5809 | 2 |
| ACNB | 1 | 1099 | 0 |
| NCNA | 7 | 16780 | 0 |
| ATOS | 6 | 7811 | 3 |
| CLVR | 8 | 28927 | -1 |
| TLC | 1 | 125 | 0 |
| Average | 4.7 | 8751 | 0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 4.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $9 million. That figure was $30 million in ODC’s case. Clever Leaves Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CLVR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ACNB Corporation (NASDAQ:ACNB) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ODC is 46.4. 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 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately ODC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ODC investors were disappointed as the stock returned 4% since the end of March (through 6/11) 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 in 2021.
Follow Oil-Dri Corp Of America (NYSE:ODC)
Follow Oil-Dri Corp Of America (NYSE:ODC)
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
