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 first 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 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) based on that data.
Is Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) going to take off soon? The smart money is in an optimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund positions rose by 3 lately. Our calculations also showed that UBER is among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
In the financial world there are tons of tools stock traders employ to size up stocks. Two of the less utilized tools are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can beat the S&P 500 by a superb amount (see the details here).
At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Europe is set to become the world’s largest cannabis market, so we check out this European marijuana stock pitch. We believe electric vehicles and energy storage are set to become giant markets, and we want to take advantage of the declining lithium prices amid the COVID-19 pandemic. So we asked astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about Tesla, Elon Musk, and his top stock picks. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now let's view the fresh hedge fund action regarding Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER).
What does smart money think about Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER)?
At Q1's end, a total of 97 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 3% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 0 hedge funds with a bullish position in UBER a year ago. So, let's check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Altimeter Capital Management was the largest shareholder of Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER), with a stake worth $869.8 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Altimeter Capital Management was Viking Global, which amassed a stake valued at $732.2 million. Hillhouse Capital Management, Tiger Global Management LLC, and Southpoint Capital Advisors 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 Glade Brook Capital Partners allocated the biggest weight to Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER), around 96.17% of its 13F portfolio. Tao Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 52.45 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to UBER.
As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Composite Capital, managed by David Ma, initiated the largest position in Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER). Composite Capital had $137.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eric Bannasch's Cadian Capital also initiated a $126.7 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new UBER investors: Hyder Ahmad's Broad Peak Investment Holdings, James Dinan's York Capital Management, and Aaron Cowen's Suvretta Capital Management.
Let's also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) but similarly valued. These stocks are Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (NYSE:TAK), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (NYSE:BAM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to UBER's market cap.
[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position TAK,22,734533,-6 MU,94,3990785,5 TGT,54,2208909,1 BAM,37,886441,3 Average,51.75,1955167,0.75 [/table]
As you can see these stocks had an average of 51.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1955 million. That figure was $5085 million in UBER's case. Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (NYSE:TAK) is the least popular one with only 22 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 7.9% in 2020 through May 22nd but still managed to beat the market by 15.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on UBER as the stock returned 24.7% so far in Q2 (through May 22nd) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
