Were Hedge Funds Right Betting On These Finance Stocks in Q4?

#4 Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC)

-Hedge Funds with Long Positions (as of September 30): 85

-Aggregate Value of Hedge Funds’ Holdings (as of September 30): $30.86 billion

Although the number of funds with long positions in Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) among funds covered by us declined by six during the third quarter. Moreover, among these investors, 13 funds are managed or founded by billionaires and they hold the largest amount of the aggregate value of holdings. With ownership of over 470 million shares of the company, Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway continued to remain the company’s largest shareholder among funds covered by us at the end of September.

The conviction of all these investors on Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) paid off rather well during the final quarter of 2015 as the shares of the banking giant appreciated by 6.82% during that period. One can understand why Wells Fargo & Co is such a popular stock among hedge funds by looking at the performance of the company in the last few years. Not only has its stock more than doubled since the start of 2012, but the company also consistently increased its dividends. The $0.38 per share quarterly dividend that Wells Fargo & Co currently pays translates into an attractive annual dividend yield of nearly 3% currently. For the fourth quarter, Wells Fargo delivered mixed results with EPS of $1.03 and revenue of $21.6 billion, compared to estimates of $1.02 and $21.8 billion, respectively.