Do Hedge Funds Love Nanobiotix S.A. (NBTX)?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 866 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX).

Is Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX) a bargain? Money managers were turning less bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions were trimmed by 1 recently. Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 6. Our calculations also showed that NBTX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the 21st century investor’s toolkit there are a large number of gauges shareholders put to use to appraise their holdings. Some of the most innovative gauges are hedge fund and insider trading moves. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can outperform the S&P 500 by a healthy margin (see the details here). 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 .

Joseph Edelman of Perceptive Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $23 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. 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. Now let’s check out the key hedge fund action encompassing Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -17% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in NBTX a year ago. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Perceptive Advisors, managed by Joseph Edelman, holds the number one position in Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX). Perceptive Advisors has a $15.9 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Eashwar Krishnan of Tybourne Capital Management, with a $11.3 million position; 0.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism contain OrbiMed Advisors, Michael Rockefeller and KarláKroeker’s Woodline Partners and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Tybourne Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX), around 0.25% of its 13F portfolio. Perceptive Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.2 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NBTX.

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: Citadel Investment Group. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because none of the 750+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified NBTX as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX). We will take a look at Misonix, Inc. (NASDAQ:MSON), Century Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNBKA), INDUS Realty Trust, Inc. (NASDAQ:INDT), Innate Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:IPHA), Naked Brand Group Limited (NASDAQ:NAKD), Entravision Communications Corporation (NYSE:EVC), and Macatawa Bank Corporation (NASDAQ:MCBC). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble NBTX’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 6.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $28 million. That figure was $36 million in NBTX’s case. Entravision Communications Corporation (NYSE:EVC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Innate Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:IPHA) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Nanobiotix S.A. (NASDAQ:NBTX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NBTX is 44. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and surpassed the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately NBTX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); NBTX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -3.5% since the end of March (through 6/18) 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.

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