The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL).
The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 34. Our calculations also showed that SMPL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
Today there are dozens of metrics shareholders can use to assess stocks. Some of the most useful metrics are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a healthy amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .
Sander Gerber of Hudson Bay Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think SMPL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 38% from the fourth quarter of 2020. By comparison, 19 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SMPL a year ago. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) was held by Scopus Asset Management, which reported holding $72.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $39.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Hudson Way Capital Management, Millennium Management, and GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hudson Way Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL), around 5.07% of its 13F portfolio. Franklin Street Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.96 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SMPL.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the biggest call position in The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL). Millennium Management had $10.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Sander Gerber’s Hudson Bay Capital Management also made a $4.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new SMPL investors: Graham F. Smith’s Franklin Street Capital, Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) but similarly valued. These stocks are Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP), Vivint Smart Home, Inc. (NYSE:VVNT), GrowGeneration Corp. (NASDAQ:GRWG), NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSE:NG), American National Group Inc. (NASDAQ:ANAT), Matson Inc. (NYSE:MATX), and Perpetua Resources Corp. (NASDAQ:PPTA). This group of stocks’ market values resemble SMPL’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| HP | 21 | 152124 | 2 |
| VVNT | 7 | 10266 | -2 |
| GRWG | 18 | 127433 | 0 |
| NG | 15 | 310029 | -3 |
| ANAT | 11 | 55978 | -2 |
| MATX | 19 | 32004 | 5 |
| PPTA | 3 | 167659 | 3 |
| Average | 13.4 | 122213 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 13.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $122 million. That figure was $178 million in SMPL’s case. Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE:HP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Perpetua Resources Corp. (NASDAQ:PPTA) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks The Simply Good Foods Company (NASDAQ:SMPL) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SMPL is 79.4. 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. 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 returned 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th but still managed to beat the market by 7.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SMPL as the stock returned 20.7% since the end of March (through 7/16) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.
Follow Simply Good Foods Co (NASDAQ:SMPL)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
