Was The Smart Money Right About NXP Semiconductors NV (NXPI)?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the June quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge fund investors experienced strong gains on the back of a strong market performance, which certainly propelled them to adjust their equity holdings so as to maintain the desired risk profile. As a result, the relevancy of these public filings and their content is indisputable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI).

Is NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) a bargain? The smart money was becoming less confident. The number of long hedge fund bets shrunk by 1 lately. NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) was in 52 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 93. Our calculations also showed that NXPI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 53 hedge funds in our database with NXPI holdings at the end of March.

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Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Managemnet

Dmitry Balyasny of Balyasny Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, billionaire John Paulson is loading up on the miners, so we are checking out stock pitches like this mining stock. We go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Keeping this in mind let’s review the latest hedge fund action surrounding NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI).

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 52 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -2% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards NXPI over the last 24 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

Is NXPI A Good Stock To Buy?

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management has the biggest position in NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI), worth close to $212.9 million, corresponding to 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by First Pacific Advisors LLC, managed by Robert Rodriguez and Steven Romick, which holds a $149.2 million position; 1.9% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism include Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, John Petry’s Sessa Capital and Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Mountain Road Advisors allocated the biggest weight to NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI), around 8.23% of its 13F portfolio. Breakline Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 8.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NXPI.

Judging by the fact that NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) has faced bearish sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there exists a select few hedgies who were dropping their full holdings heading into Q3. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management sold off the biggest stake of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $158.2 million in stock, and Bijan Modanlou, Joseph Bou-Saba, and Jayaveera Kodali’s Alta Park Capital was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $60.5 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds heading into Q3.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI). These stocks are Honda Motor Co Ltd (NYSE:HMC), Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Banco Bradesco SA (NYSE:BBD), DocuSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX), and Ambev SA (NYSE:ABEV). This group of stocks’ market caps match NXPI’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
HMC 10 374945 -2
GPN 66 4858185 4
TWTR 89 6031488 -18
BBD 18 362308 -1
DOCU 58 4610698 -2
FCX 76 3869626 8
ABEV 18 301004 0
Average 47.9 2915465 -1.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 47.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2915 million. That figure was $1337 million in NXPI’s case. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Honda Motor Co Ltd (NYSE:HMC) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. NXP Semiconductors NV (NASDAQ:NXPI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NXPI is 47.4. 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 gained 29.6% in 2021 through November 5th and still beat the market by 3.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on NXPI as the stock returned 9.3% since the end of Q2 (through 11/5) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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