Should I Buy NetApp Inc. (NTAP)?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 873 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 June 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) based on that data.

NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 34. NTAP shareholders have witnessed an increase in enthusiasm from smart money of late. There were 26 hedge funds in our database with NTAP holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that NTAP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 19% from the first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 25 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in NTAP a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Arrowstreet Capital was the largest shareholder of NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), with a stake worth $139 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing Arrowstreet Capital was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $69.1 million. D E Shaw, Ariel Investments, and Two Sigma Advisors 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 Sustainable Insight Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), around 4.27% of its 13F portfolio. L2 Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.4 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NTAP.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have jumped into NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) headfirst. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, initiated the biggest position in NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP). Arrowstreet Capital had $139 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also initiated a $13 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new NTAP positions are Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, Kevin Parker’s Sustainable Insight Capital Management, and Stephen Mildenhall’s Contrarius Investment Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) but similarly valued. These stocks are Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE:DPZ), NVR, Inc. (NYSE:NVR), Healthpeak Properties, Inc. (NYSE:PEAK), Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY), Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP), Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH), and Affirm Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFRM). This group of stocks’ market caps match NTAP’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1466 million. That figure was $438 million in NTAP’s case. Farfetch Limited (NYSE:FTCH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NTAP is 52.6. 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 24.9% in 2021 through October 15th and still beat the market by 4.5 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on NTAP as the stock returned 16.8% since the end of Q2 (through 10/15) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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