Was The Smart Money Right About Anaplan, Inc. (PLAN)?

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 Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) makes for a good investment right now.

Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) has seen a decrease in hedge fund sentiment lately. Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) was in 52 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 63. There were 55 hedge funds in our database with PLAN holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that PLAN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

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

At the end of June, a total of 52 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards PLAN over the last 24 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management has the number one position in Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN), worth close to $216.7 million, comprising 1.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Alkeon Capital Management, managed by Panayotis Takis Sparaggis, which holds a $200.3 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish comprise Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management, Robert Pitts’s Steadfast Capital Management and Eric Bannasch’s Cadian Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Cowbird Capital allocated the biggest weight to Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN), around 7.52% of its 13F portfolio. Cadian Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 7.42 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PLAN.

Since Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) has experienced a decline in interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there were a few fund managers who were dropping their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Michael Lowenstein’s Kensico Capital sold off the largest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $127.6 million in stock, and Josh Resnick’s Jericho Capital Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $61.2 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds last quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN). These stocks are PVH Corp (NYSE:PVH), Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:LSCC), LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL), Churchill Downs Incorporated (NASDAQ:CHDN), Rexford Industrial Realty Inc (NYSE:REXR), AutoNation, Inc. (NYSE:AN), and Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to PLAN’s market value.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $588 million. That figure was $2142 million in PLAN’s case. Churchill Downs Incorporated (NASDAQ:CHDN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand LG Display Co Ltd. (NYSE:LPL) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Anaplan, Inc. (NYSE:PLAN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PLAN is 76.8. 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 29.6% in 2021 through November 5th but still managed to beat the market by 3.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on PLAN as the stock returned 18% since the end of June (through 11/5) 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.

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

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