Hedge Funds Are Cashing Out Of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NTLA)

Is Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 30. NTLA shareholders have witnessed a decrease in hedge fund sentiment recently. There were 30 hedge funds in our database with NTLA holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that NTLA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

David Siegel of Two Sigma Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. 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. 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 go over the key hedge fund action surrounding Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA).

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

At the end of March, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -3% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards NTLA over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

The largest stake in Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) was held by ARK Investment Management, which reported holding $771.4 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Citadel Investment Group with a $56.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Two Sigma Advisors, Holocene Advisors, and Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Burrage Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA), around 4.14% of its 13F portfolio. Integral Health Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.9 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NTLA.

Because Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) has faced a decline in interest from the smart money, we can see that there was a specific group of funds that elected to cut their positions entirely heading into Q2. At the top of the heap, s Farallon Capital cut the biggest position of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at about $12.2 million in stock. Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s fund, Baker Bros. Advisors, also dropped its stock, about $6.1 million worth. These moves are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA). These stocks are Manpowergroup Inc (NYSE:MAN), Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ:CROX), Nutanix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTNX), Enel Chile S.A. (NYSE:ENIC), Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL), J2 Global Inc (NASDAQ:JCOM), and KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR). This group of stocks’ market values match NTLA’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $485 million. That figure was $1139 million in NTLA’s case. Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ:CROX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Enel Chile S.A. (NYSE:ENIC) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NTLA is 78.8. 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. 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 22.8% in 2021 through July 2nd and still beat the market by 6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on NTLA as the stock returned 104% since the end of Q1 (through 7/2) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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

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