Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Synovus Financial Corp. (SNV)?

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September 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 Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV).

Is Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV) an exceptional investment right now? The smart money was becoming less hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets were trimmed by 1 in recent months. Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 41. Our calculations also showed that SNV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 30 hedge funds in our database with SNV holdings at the end of June.

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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action surrounding Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -3% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 25 hedge funds with a bullish position in SNV a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors held the most valuable stake in Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV), which was worth $41.4 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Carlson Capital which amassed $33.7 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Forest Hill Capital, and AQR Capital Management 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 Forest Hill Capital allocated the biggest weight to Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV), around 4.59% of its 13F portfolio. Private Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.96 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SNV.

Since Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV) has witnessed declining sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of money managers that slashed their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. At the top of the heap, Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors dropped the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $1.1 million in stock, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $1.1 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV). These stocks are Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE:FOUR), Coty Inc (NYSE:COTY), MasTec, Inc. (NYSE:MTZ), Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT), KT Corporation (NYSE:KT), Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXST), and Texas Roadhouse Inc (NASDAQ:TXRH). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to SNV’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $525 million. That figure was $235 million in SNV’s case. Coty Inc (NYSE:COTY) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE:SNV) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SNV is 59.9. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately SNV wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on SNV were disappointed as the stock returned 3.2% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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