Here’s What Hedge Funds Think About Edgewell Personal Care Company (EPC)

Nina Todic

Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 7:06 PM

Is Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) a good stock to buy right now? We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before doing days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more incentives and resources than the average investor. The funds have access to expert networks and get tips from industry insiders. They also have numerous Ivy League graduates and MBAs. Like everyone else, hedge funds perform miserably at times, but their consensus picks have historically outperformed the market after risk adjustments.

Is Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) undervalued? Investors who are in the know are becoming hopeful. The number of bullish hedge fund bets improved by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that epc isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

In today’s marketplace there are several formulas investors put to use to grade their holdings. Two of the best formulas are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite money managers can beat their index-focused peers by a significant margin (see the details here).

Let's view the new hedge fund action encompassing Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC).

How have hedgies been trading Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 6% from the fourth quarter of 2018. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in EPC over the last 15 quarters. 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, GAMCO Investors held the most valuable stake in Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC), which was worth $63.3 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was Armistice Capital which amassed $42.7 million worth of shares. Moreover, Arrowstreet Capital, Citadel Investment Group, and Gotham Asset Management were also bullish on Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Barington Capital Group, managed by James A. Mitarotonda, assembled the most outsized position in Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC). Barington Capital Group had $4.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. D. E. Shaw's D E Shaw also initiated a $4.1 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new EPC investors: Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint Capital, David Harding's Winton Capital Management, and Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management.

Let's go over hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Granite Real Estate Investment Trust (NYSE:GRP), Franklin Electric Co., Inc. (NASDAQ:FELE), First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC), and Resideo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:REZI). This group of stocks' market valuations match EPC's market valuation.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position GRP,13,137058,2 FELE,15,232249,6 FFBC,8,19934,2 REZI,32,393327,-3 Average,17,195642,1.75 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 17 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $196 million. That figure was $180 million in EPC's case. Resideo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:REZI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Financial Bancorp (NASDAQ:FFBC) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 1.9% in Q2 through May 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 3 percentage points. Unfortunately EPC wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EPC were disappointed as the stock returned -33.1% during the same period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q2.

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

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