Should I Buy Portland General Electric Company (POR)?

At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 866 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of March 31st. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR) makes for a good investment right now.

Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR) shareholders have witnessed an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 27. Our calculations also showed that POR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. 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 homepage. Now we’re going to take a gander at the recent hedge fund action surrounding Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards POR over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Millennium Management was the largest shareholder of Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR), with a stake worth $10 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Millennium Management was Point72 Asset Management, which amassed a stake valued at $9.4 million. ExodusPoint Capital, Coann Capital, and Renaissance Technologies 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 Coann Capital allocated the biggest weight to Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR), around 6.33% of its 13F portfolio. Huber Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.87 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to POR.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Tudor Investment Corp, managed by Paul Tudor Jones, assembled the largest position in Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR). Tudor Investment Corp had $1.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital also initiated a $0.7 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new POR positions are Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR). These stocks are PS Business Parks Inc (NYSE:PSB), Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK), Teradata Corporation (NYSE:TDC), John Bean Technologies Corporation (NYSE:JBT), AdaptHealth Corp. (NASDAQ:AHCO), World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE), and 51job, Inc. (NASDAQ:JOBS). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to POR’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $466 million. That figure was $68 million in POR’s case. Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand PS Business Parks Inc (NYSE:PSB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Portland General Electric Company (NYSE:POR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for POR is 45.3. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and surpassed the market again by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately POR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); POR investors were disappointed as the stock returned 1.7% since the end of March (through 7/16) 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.

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

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