We recently published a list of Billionaire Jim Simons’ RenTech’s 10 Small-Cap Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Permian Resources Corporation (NYSE:PR) stands against Billionaire Jim Simons’ RenTech’s other small-cap stock picks with huge upside potential.
Jim Simons was (and still is even after his death in May 2024) one of the biggest names – if not the biggest – in the hedge fund space. He was a gifted mathematician and had a successful career in academia before making a bold pivot to finance in the late 70s.
In 1978, he founded Monemetrics (a currency trading firm) and Limroy (a hedge fund), which were collapsed into one entity in 1982 and renamed Renaissance Technologies Corporation. This entity had one major objective: to use quantitative, computer-driven models to exploit market inefficiencies. In other words, Simons and his team were committed to making investment decisions based on sophisticated algorithms.
Renaissance Technologies (RenTech) began as a hedge fund but later morphed into something bigger. It is now an investment management firm that operates several hedge funds. Its flagship offering is the Medallion Fund. The Medallion Fund is known for extraordinary returns. During the dot.com crash (early 2000s) and the financial crisis (2007-2011), Medallion’s returns were 56.6% and 74.6%, respectively. Following the first two years of operation, the lowest annual return was 31.5%.
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The Medallion Fund’s track record in the market, and by extension RenTech’s, made Simons a lot of money. At death, he was worth $31.4 billion and ranked among the top 100 richest people in the world. And, as Simons often said, all of the success he had in the market comes down to the love of mathematics. Accordingly, the Medallion Fund has been capable of extraordinary returns mostly because the investment team – led by Simons – leveraged mathematics.
The fund utilizes algorithm-based methods to identify patterns and leverage past data for investing decisions. That is why RenTech invested (and continues to invest) billions in intellectuals and professionals from fields like Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics. In one of his last interviews, he said: “We hired statisticians, physicists, astronomers, mathematicians — the important thing was that they were very smart.”
Jim Simons was a generational talent when it came to investing. He started an investment business and led to heights that others can only dream of. And because his legacy lives in RenTech, it makes sense to want to know what companies they’re invested in.
Our Methodology
We sifted through Renaissance Technologies’ Q4 2024 SEC 13F filings to compile this list. We focused only on shares in companies and excluded interests in ETFs and options. Then, we picked the stocks with a market capitalization of $10 billion or less. From the result, we ranked the stocks based on analyst price targets and selected the top 10 companies with the highest upside potential (as of April 30).
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A close-up of a wellhead, showing off the company’s production of oil and natural gas.
Permian Resources Corporation (NYSE:PR)
Renaissance Technologies’ Stake Value: $155,436,972
Upside Potential as of May 1: 43.93%
Market Capitalization as of May 1: $9.677 Billion
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 54
Permian Resources Corporation (NYSE:PR) is an independent oil and natural gas producer. It explores for, extracts, and develops crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids. Its products serve the energy sector, supplying fuel to refineries and other industrial buyers in both domestic and global markets.
In Q4 2024, Permian Resources (NYSE:PR) reported solid operational performance. The quarter’s crude oil production averaged 171,274 barrels per day (Bbls/d), and total production reached 368,414 barrels of oil equivalent per day (Boe/d). On the financial front, the company generated $872 million in cash from operating activities and $400 million in adjusted free cash flow during the quarter. Notably, the corporation has achieved commendable operational efficiency gains; it reduced drilling and completion costs to approximately $775 per lateral foot, a 3% reduction from the previous quarter and a 14% reduction year-over-year.
For 2025, Permian Resources (NYSE:PR) has outlined a capital-efficient operational plan focused on delivering approximately 8% higher annual production compared to 2024. It also aims to maintain a similar capital budget of between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion. The company expects to average 170-175 mega barrels per day (MBbls/d) of oil production and 360-380 mega barrels of oil equivalent per day (MBoe/d) of total production.
On April 29, 2025, Bank of America (BofA) lowered its price target for Permian Resources (NYSE:PR) from $17 to $15, while maintaining a Buy rating. This adjustment reflects BofA’s updated oil market projections, which predict lower WTI oil prices for the second to fourth quarters of 2025.
Overall, PR ranks 7th on our list of Billionaire Jim Simons’ RenTech’s small-cap stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of PR as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than PR but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.