Were Hedge Funds Right About CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (CRWD)?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) based on that data and determine whether they were really smart about the stock.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) was in 74 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 92. CRWD shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. There were 66 hedge funds in our database with CRWD holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that CRWD isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so 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. Keeping this in mind let’s go over the fresh hedge fund action regarding CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD).

Alex Sacerdote of Whale Rock Capital Management

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

At the end of September, a total of 74 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 12% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CRWD over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Tiger Global Management LLC was the largest shareholder of CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), with a stake worth $1852.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Tiger Global Management LLC was Matrix Capital Management, which amassed a stake valued at $737.3 million. Whale Rock Capital Management, D E Shaw, and Citadel Investment Group were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Matrix Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), around 8.39% of its 13F portfolio. Jeneq Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 5.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRWD.

As one would reasonably expect, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Strategy Capital, managed by Hamilton Helmer, created the most outsized position in CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD). Strategy Capital had $49.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Nancy Zevenbergen’s Zevenbergen Capital Investments also initiated a $45.3 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Zach Schreiber’s Point State Capital, Sanjay Venkat’s Jeneq Management, and David Fiszel’s Honeycomb Asset Management.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Relx PLC (NYSE:RELX), UBS Group AG (NYSE:UBS), General Dynamics Corporation (NYSE:GD), Thomson Reuters Corporation (NYSE:TRI), Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), Honda Motor Co Ltd (NYSE:HMC), and DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM). This group of stocks’ market valuations match CRWD’s market valuation.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
RELX 7 66312 1
UBS 15 166803 0
GD 36 6719691 -1
TRI 27 246145 0
BIDU 44 2004620 -15
HMC 12 338639 2
DXCM 53 1781583 4
Average 27.7 1617685 -1.3

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1618 million. That figure was $6742 million in CRWD’s case. DexCom, Inc. (NASDAQ:DXCM) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Relx PLC (NYSE:RELX) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRWD is 84.1. 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 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately, CRWD wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on CRWD were disappointed as the stock returned -26.5% since the end of the third quarter (through 1/31) 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 all of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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