Vince Holding Corp (VNCE): Hedge Funds Keep Heading Elsewhere

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE).

Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE) was in 13 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. VNCE has experienced a decrease in hedge fund interest recently. There were 14 hedge funds in our database with VNCE positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare VNCE to other stocks including CNinsure Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:CISG), TravelCenters of America LLC (NYSEAMEX:TA), and Phoenix New Media Ltd ADR (NYSE:FENG) to get a better sense of its popularity.

We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs. We launched this strategy 2.5 years ago and it returned more than 39% since then, vs. 22% gain registered by the S&P 500 ETFs.

Hedge fund activity in Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE)

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 7% drop from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VNCE over the last 5 quarters, which has generally been negative. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management has the largest position in Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE), worth close to $7.1 million. Coming in second is Joel Ramin of 12 West Capital Management, with a $7 million position; 1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions contain Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates, David Keidan’s Buckingham Capital Management, and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock as unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Springbok Capital. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this instance because none of the 700+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified VNCE as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE) but similarly valued. We will take a look at CNinsure Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:CISG), TravelCenters of America LLC (NYSEAMEX:TA), Phoenix New Media Ltd ADR (NYSE:FENG), and Golden Entertainment Inc (NASDAQ:GDEN). All of these stocks’ market caps match VNCE’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $23 million. That figure was $32 million in VNCE’s case. TravelCenters of America LLC (NYSEAMEX:TA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CNinsure Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ:CISG) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard TA might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None