Top Hedge Funds Short Neopost

Last week we highlighted 2 stocks that prominent hedge funds were short.  And this week we have another: Neopost (NEO.PA).  Per regulatory filings in France, the following hedge funds have short positions in the company.


Hedge Funds Short Neopost

Pennant Capital: Net short 1.55% of Neopost's shares as of July 1st.  This is slightly down from the 1.63% they were short back on April 1st.

Och-Ziff Management Europe: Short 0.7% of shares as of July 20th.  This is up from 0.61% on June 23rd and 0.5% on June 19th.

GLG Partners:  Net short position of 0.59% of Neopost shares as of July 9th.  This position has slightly fluctuated from 0.62% of shares on April 14th and 0.52% of shares on March 18th.

Tiger Legatus: Short 0.58% of shares as of June 29th, down slightly from the 0.61% of shares they were short on June 26th.


The company is "engaged in producing and selling mailroom equipment" per Google Finance.  This has been a popular short among hedge funds and we even highlighted hedge fund short positions in Neopost back in 2012.  Pennant Capital had a short on at that time as well.

While this could be a hedge to some of their long positions, it seems more plausible that this is an alpha short given that Neopost is considered a secular decline story.  As the world transitions from paper/print to digital/online, the thesis is that pages/documents will be printed and mailed, instead being stored and transmitted digitally.  Neopost shares are down around 29% over the past year.

A US-traded company, Pitney Bowes (PBI), is involved in the same industry.  While we've heard some hedge funds were short in prior years, there's no way to know for sure who's short (if any) these days since there's no rule of public disclosure of short positions in the US.  Not to mention, the company has shifted its focus to include digital offerings as well.

You can view more of the latest hedge fund short positions here (scroll through).

Jason Mitchell of GLG Partners on Investing in Sustainability

Jason Mitchell of GLG Partners was recently named one of Institutional Investor's 2011 rising hedge fund stars. He appeared on CNBC to talk about sustainable picks as well as how he approaches socially responsible investing.

He ponders, "What is sustainability? What is the opportunity set around that? And how we've defined it is: sustainability is the investment required to address demographic, environmental and social change."

He says there are around 8-10 sectors that reflect that, mentioning healthcare, education services, and agriculture.

Regarding healthcare specifically, Mitchell notes that "it's defensive, there's value, there's a lot of optionality, but even outside of the US, we're sitting on the cusp of a really interesting start of privatization in Germany ... probably two-thirds of German public hospitals are losing money and as a result, under investing. And the government is slowly, very deliberately and thoughtfully privatizing some of that and there are two companies out there. I mean, these are mid to large cap companies and they know how to run it. They reinvest, increase doctor count, and as a result get a more efficient balance sheet."

Embedded below is Mitchell's video interview with CNBC (email readers need to come to the site to watch the video):



We've also posted up an interview with another 2011 hedge fund rising star: Grandmaster Capital's Patrick Wolff who says that China is a debt-fueled investment bubble.

GLG Partners Start Ovoca Gold Position

Due to a regulatory filing made on June 7th, UK based hedge fund GLG Partners has disclosed a brand new position in Ovoca Gold (LON: OVG). They own a 5.44% interest in the AIM listed gold mining company.

Ovoca Gold is also listed on the ESM market of the Irish Stock Exchange (OVX). The company's principal activity is gold exploration in the Magadan Region of the Russian Federation. Previously, Ovoca acquired, developed and sold the Goltsovoye silver project to JSC Polymetal. You can view other hedge fund positions in UK markets here (scroll through).

Last year, we posted up GLG's research on the effect of analyst recommendations which was intriguing and worth checking out if you missed it as well.

Hedge Fund GLG Partners: Research on Effect of Analyst Recommendations

UK based hedge fund GLG Partners is out with some intriguing research on the effect analyst ratings have on a stock. This is actually a follow-up to some previous commentary where they concluded the following:

- European analyst recommendations outperform
- 'Buy' recommendations outperform more consistently than 'Sell' recommendations
- A bunch of handpicked sell-side firms by GLG outperformed the rest of analyst recommendations in Europe

With that in mind, they move next to the topic of: Which analysts should you pay attention to? Simply put, they find that large broker 'buy' recommendations move junk stocks more significantly than any other category. They also find that 'buy' picks are generally more powerful than 'sell' picks. As one can imagine, stocks that are disliked take a beating when 'sell' recommendations are issued. Large brokers also have more of an impact when they put out a 'sell' on some of the most popular stocks.

Overall, some interesting research from GLG Partners, a hedge fund firm that was recently ranked 22nd on a list of the world's largest hedge funds. It's obvious that sell-side research and alerts have an impact on a stock price, it's just interesting to see it quantified. Things could get even more interesting if they had singled firms out and done a case by case study to determine which sell-siders had the most influence. It looks like we'll have to patiently wait for someone to generate such data.

Taken from GLG's website, embedded below is their look at what type of sell-siders you should pay attention to:



You can directly download a .pdf here.

For more insight from GLG Partners, we covered when Pierre Lagrange recently presented at a hedge fund panel. And for more of our coverage of the UK, head to our posts on positions hedge funds hold in the UK.