At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 873 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 June 30th. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) makes for a good investment right now.
Is Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) a buy right now? Prominent investors were betting on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went up by 2 recently. Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) was in 44 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 49. Our calculations also showed that VOYA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 42 hedge funds in our database with VOYA positions at the end of the first quarter.
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Robert Pohly of Samlyn Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think VOYA Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of the second quarter, a total of 44 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 5% from the first quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VOYA over the last 24 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Richard S. Pzena’s Pzena Investment Management has the biggest position in Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA), worth close to $290.7 million, comprising 1.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Samlyn Capital, managed by Robert Pohly, which holds a $225 million position; 3.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions encompass Michael A. Price and Amos Meron’s Empyrean Capital Partners, Ian Simm’s Impax Asset Management and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position BlueMar Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA), around 3.44% of its 13F portfolio. Samlyn Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 3.3 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VOYA.
As industrywide interest jumped, specific money managers have jumped into Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) headfirst. Laurion Capital Management, managed by Benjamin A. Smith, established the most valuable position in Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA). Laurion Capital Management had $30.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors also initiated a $16.6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Daniel Johnson’s Gillson Capital, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Cimarex Energy Co (NYSE:XEC), Credit Acceptance Corp. (NASDAQ:CACC), Scientific Games Corp (NASDAQ:SGMS), Apartment Income REIT Corp. (NYSE:AIRC), RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:RNR), Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN), and Upwork Inc. (NASDAQ:UPWK). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble VOYA’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| XEC | 36 | 1134161 | -3 |
| CACC | 20 | 574521 | -3 |
| SGMS | 24 | 1451681 | 1 |
| AIRC | 14 | 479817 | 0 |
| RNR | 31 | 446197 | 1 |
| OLN | 37 | 1325786 | 3 |
| UPWK | 26 | 427800 | -6 |
| Average | 26.9 | 834280 | -1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $834 million. That figure was $984 million in VOYA’s case. Olin Corporation (NYSE:OLN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Apartment Income REIT Corp. (NYSE:AIRC) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Voya Financial Inc (NYSE:VOYA) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VOYA is 83.9. 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 22.9% in 2021 through October 1st and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately VOYA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VOYA were disappointed as the stock returned 0.9% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/1) 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 since 2019.
Follow Voya Financial Inc. (NYSE:VOYA)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
