Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX) Fell Out Of Favor With Hedge Funds

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the March 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 Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX).

Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in enthusiasm from smart money lately. Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) was in 57 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 66. There were 66 hedge funds in our database with XLNX positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that XLNX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 57 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -14% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 38 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in XLNX 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.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Pentwater Capital Management, managed by Matthew Halbower, holds the biggest position in Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX). Pentwater Capital Management has a $723.7 million position in the stock, comprising 6.9% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Matrix Capital Management, managed by David Goel and Paul Ferri, which holds a $260.2 million position; the fund has 3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that hold long positions consist of Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 0 allocated the biggest weight to Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), around 11.84% of its 13F portfolio. 0 is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 7.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to XLNX.

Seeing as Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) has experienced bearish sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of hedge funds that slashed their full holdings heading into Q2. At the top of the heap, Gil Simon’s SoMa Equity Partners dumped the largest position of the “upper crust” of funds followed by Insider Monkey, totaling an estimated $177.2 million in stock. Panayotis Takis Sparaggis’s fund, Alkeon Capital Management, also dumped its stock, about $99.8 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 9 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX). These stocks are Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR), Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (NYSE:PEG), Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT), SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:SBAC), Skyworks Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:SWKS), Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT), and Welltower Inc. (NYSE:WELL). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to XLNX’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $855 million. That figure was $3581 million in XLNX’s case. SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:SBAC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd (NYSE:CHT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for XLNX is 71.9. 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. 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately XLNX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on XLNX were disappointed as the stock returned 3.7% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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