Is Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial (CRESY) A Good Stock To Buy?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 817 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds' 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY) in this article.

Is Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY) undervalued? Prominent investors were getting less bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions retreated by 3 lately. Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY) was in 4 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 11. Our calculations also showed that CRESY isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 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.

Hedge funds' reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn't keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds' small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

James Dondero Highland Capital Management
James Dondero Highland Capital Management

James Dondero of Highland Capital Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Now let's take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY).

Hedge fund activity in Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY)

At third quarter's end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -43% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 8 hedge funds with a bullish position in CRESY a year ago. With hedge funds' sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey's hedge fund database, 683 Capital Partners, managed by Ari Zweiman, holds the most valuable position in Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY). 683 Capital Partners has a $3.9 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Leucadia National, led by Ian Cumming and Joseph Steinberg, holding a $2.1 million position; 1.5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish encompass James Dondero's Highland Capital Management, Donald Sussman's Paloma Partners and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Leucadia National allocated the biggest weight to Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY), around 1.49% of its 13F portfolio. 683 Capital Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.28 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CRESY.

Since Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there is a sect of funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. Interestingly, Renaissance Technologies cut the biggest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $0.2 million in stock, and Ken Griffin's Citadel Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $0.1 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds last quarter.

Let's check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY). We will take a look at Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC), Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company (NYSE:HBB), Verso Corporation (NYSE:VRS), Selecta Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:SELB), Turtle Beach Corp (NASDAQ:HEAR), Citi Trends, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTRN), and Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX). This group of stocks' market valuations resemble CRESY's market valuation.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position ODC,4,32322,-1 HBB,8,5936,1 VRS,15,50832,0 SELB,18,63282,-1 HEAR,13,39126,0 CTRN,17,45754,4 AGRX,9,53501,-1 Average,12,41536,0.3 [/table]

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $42 million. That figure was $7 million in CRESY's case. Selecta Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:SELB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Cresud Sociedad Anonima Comercial, Inmobiliaria, Financiera y Agropecuaria (NASDAQ:CRESY) is even less popular than ODC. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CRESY is 12.9. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on CRESY as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds' consensus picks still generated respectable returns. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th and still beat the market by 16.1 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CRESY as the stock returned 42% since Q3 (through November 27th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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

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