Hedge funds run by legendary names like Nelson Peltz and David Tepper make billions of dollars a year for themselves and their super-rich accredited investors (you’ve got to have a minimum of $1 million liquid to invest in a hedge fund) by spending enormous resources on analyzing and uncovering data about small-cap stocks that the big brokerage houses don’t follow. Small caps are where they can generate significant out-performance. These stocks have been on a tear since the end of June, outperforming large-cap index funds by more than 10 percentage points. That’s why we pay special attention to hedge fund activity in these stocks.
Is Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL) a bargain? The smart money is definitely becoming hopeful. The number of long hedge fund bets that are revealed through the 13F filings moved up by 2 recently. MOBL was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 8 hedge funds in our database with MOBL positions at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Datalink Corporation (NASDAQ:DTLK), Tandem Diabetes Care Inc (NASDAQ:TNDM), and Enzo Biochem, Inc. (NYSE:ENZ) to gather more data points.
At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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Keeping this in mind, we’re going to take a peek at the new action encompassing Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL).
How have hedgies been trading Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL)?
Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 25% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards MOBL over the last 5 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings substantially (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Lei Zhang of Hillhouse Capital Management holds the most valuable position in Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL). Hillhouse Capital Management has a $2.8 million position in the stock. Coming in second is Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, holding a $2.2 million position. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Leon Shaulov’s Maplelane Capital, Jack Ripsteen’s Potrero Capital Research and D E Shaw. We should note that two of these hedge funds (Maplelane Capital and Potrero Capital Research) are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
As one would reasonably expect, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Thrax Management, led by Sheetal Duggal, established the most valuable position in Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL). Thrax Management had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt. also initiated a position during the quarter.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL). We will take a look at Datalink Corporation (NASDAQ:DTLK), Tandem Diabetes Care Inc (NASDAQ:TNDM), Enzo Biochem, Inc. (NYSE:ENZ), and vTv Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:VTVT). This group of stocks’ market caps match MOBL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| DTLK | 13 | 25588 | 2 |
| TNDM | 12 | 34239 | 1 |
| ENZ | 12 | 17117 | 0 |
| VTVT | 3 | 2485 | 0 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $20 million. That figure was $11 million in MOBL’s case. Datalink Corporation (NASDAQ:DTLK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand vTv Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:VTVT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Mobileiron Inc (NASDAQ:MOBL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is just average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard DTLK might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: None
