The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on September 30th. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 867 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP) based on those filings.
First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 32. FBP investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. There were 25 hedge funds in our database with FBP holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that FBP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action regarding First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP).
Peter Algert of Algert Global
Do Hedge Funds Think FBP Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q3’s end, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 4% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 21 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in FBP a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Arrowstreet Capital held the most valuable stake in First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP), which was worth $58.5 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Arctis Global which amassed $35.6 million worth of shares. GLG Partners, Point72 Asset Management, and Alyeska Investment Group were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Arctis Global allocated the biggest weight to First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP), around 10.34% of its 13F portfolio. Mendon Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.52 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to FBP.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have jumped into First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP) headfirst. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, initiated the most valuable position in First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP). Citadel Investment Group had $2.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager also made a $1.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital, Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, and Peter Algert’s Algert Global.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP). These stocks are Cadence Bank (NYSE:CADE), Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP), American Equity Investment Life Holding Company (NYSE:AEL), United Natural Foods, Inc. (NYSE:UNFI), Columbia Banking System Inc (NASDAQ:COLB), Avista Corp (NYSE:AVA), and Cortexyme, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRTX). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to FBP’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| CADE | 24 | 113674 | -1 |
| YELP | 26 | 534890 | -1 |
| AEL | 20 | 170592 | 0 |
| UNFI | 19 | 92199 | 4 |
| COLB | 13 | 151306 | 1 |
| AVA | 14 | 42162 | -3 |
| CRTX | 10 | 22939 | 1 |
| Average | 18 | 161109 | 0.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $161 million. That figure was $254 million in FBP’s case. Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cortexyme, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRTX) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. First Bancorp (NYSE:FBP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for FBP is 80.4. 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 positive signal but 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately FBP wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on FBP were disappointed as the stock returned 1.4% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
