Do Hedge Funds Love Blackbaud, Inc. (BLKB)?

At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 866 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of March 31st. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) makes for a good investment right now.

Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) has experienced an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) was in 20 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 22. Our calculations also showed that BLKB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the eyes of most stock holders, hedge funds are viewed as worthless, outdated financial vehicles of years past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, Our experts choose to focus on the bigwigs of this group, around 850 funds. These hedge fund managers oversee the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by following their best equity investments, Insider Monkey has unsheathed various investment strategies that have historically outstripped Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, pet market is growing at a 7% annual rate and is expected to reach $110 billion in 2021. So, we are checking out the 5 best stocks for animal lovers. We go through lists like the 15 best Jim Cramer stocks to identify the next Tesla that will deliver outsized returns. 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 homepage. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the latest hedge fund action regarding Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB).

Do Hedge Funds Think BLKB Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 22 hedge funds with a bullish position in BLKB a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) was held by Echo Street Capital Management, which reported holding $32.6 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Greenhouse Funds with a $28.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Greenhouse Funds, AQR Capital Management, and Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Greenhouse Funds allocated the biggest weight to Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB), around 3.06% of its 13F portfolio. Provenire Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.81 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BLKB.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have jumped into Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) headfirst. Two Sigma Advisors, managed by John Overdeck and David Siegel, assembled the most valuable position in Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB). Two Sigma Advisors had $3.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Anthony S. Daffer’s Provenire Capital also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new BLKB positions are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB). These stocks are InnovAge Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:INNV), Weingarten Realty Investors (NYSE:WRI), PDC Energy Inc (NASDAQ:PDCE), ABM Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ABM), Copa Holdings, S.A. (NYSE:CPA), 3D Systems Corporation (NYSE:DDD), and Visteon Corp (NASDAQ:VC). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BLKB’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 20.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $207 million. That figure was $109 million in BLKB’s case. InnovAge Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:INNV) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Weingarten Realty Investors (NYSE:WRI) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLKB) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BLKB is 49.9. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and surpassed the market again by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately BLKB wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); BLKB investors were disappointed as the stock returned -0.4% since the end of March (through 7/16) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

Suggested Articles:

• 15 Largest Food Delivery Companies in the World
• 15 Best Technology Stocks To Buy Now
• 10 Best Alternative Energy Stocks to Buy Now

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