Here’s What Hedge Funds Think About Littelfuse, Inc. (LFUS)

Abigail Fisher

Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 6:35 PM

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful 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 write-ups 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 and analyze what the smart money thinks of Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) based on that data.

Is Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) a marvelous investment today? The smart money is getting less optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund positions were trimmed by 2 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that LFUS isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

According to most shareholders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, old financial tools of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation today, Our experts look at the elite of this group, approximately 750 funds. These money managers orchestrate the majority of the smart money's total asset base, and by tracking their best equity investments, Insider Monkey has revealed several investment strategies that have historically beaten Mr. Market. Insider Monkey's flagship hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points a year since its inception in May 2014 through June 18th. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 28.2% since February 2017 (through June 18th) even though the market was up nearly 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 5 short targets in our latest quarterly update and they are already down an average of 8.2% in a month whereas our long picks outperformed the market by 2.5 percentage points in this volatile 5 week period (our long picks also beat the market by 15 percentage points so far this year).

Let's take a peek at the new hedge fund action regarding Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS).

Hedge fund activity in Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS)

Heading into the second quarter of 2019, a total of 13 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -13% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards LFUS over the last 15 quarters. So, let's check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Fisher Asset Management held the most valuable stake in Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS), which was worth $92 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was Ariel Investments which amassed $80.6 million worth of shares. Moreover, Impax Asset Management, Giverny Capital, and GAMCO Investors were also bullish on Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.

Due to the fact that Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) has faced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it's safe to say that there lies a certain "tier" of funds that elected to cut their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. Interestingly, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley's Polar Capital said goodbye to the largest stake of the "upper crust" of funds watched by Insider Monkey, valued at about $6.2 million in stock, and Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $4.4 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 2 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let's also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS). These stocks are Kirby Corporation (NYSE:KEX), Flowers Foods, Inc. (NYSE:FLO), Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT), and Viper Energy Partners LP (NASDAQ:VNOM). This group of stocks' market values are similar to LFUS's market value.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position KEX,19,514257,3 FLO,18,190309,-2 MAT,21,703901,6 VNOM,17,190764,7 Average,18.75,399808,3.5 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $400 million. That figure was $249 million in LFUS's case. Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Viper Energy Partners LP (NASDAQ:VNOM) is the least popular one with only 17 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) is even less popular than VNOM. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards LFUS. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. Unfortunately LFUS wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); LFUS investors were disappointed as the stock returned -3.3% during the same time frame 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 the second quarter.

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

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