Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)

After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from the more than 700 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC).

Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. HSIC investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with HSIC holdings 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 Hologic, Inc. (NASDAQ:HOLX), Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS), and Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (NYSE:CHD) to gather more data points.

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Now, we’re going to take a look at the new action encompassing Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC).

How are hedge funds trading Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, up by 29% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, David Blood and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management has the biggest position in Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC), worth close to $159.9 million, amounting to 2.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake, worth an estimated $68.3 million, is held by Fisher Asset Management, led by Ken Fisher; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism consist of Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management and Mario Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors.

As aggregate interest increased, some big names have jumped into Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) headfirst. Alyeska Investment Group, managed by Anand Parekh, created the most outsized position in Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC), worth some $54.1 million at the end of the quarter. Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies also initiated a $12.5 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new HSIC investors: Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC). We will take a look at Hologic, Inc. (NASDAQ:HOLX), Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS), Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (NYSE:CHD), and XL Group plc (NYSE:XL). This group of stocks’ market values match HSIC’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 33 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $937 million. That figure was a meager $388 million in HSIC’s case. Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS) is the most popular stock in this table, whereas Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (NYSE:CHD) is the least popular one with only 18 bullish hedge fund positions. Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ:HSIC) is not the least popular stock in this group, but hedge fund interest is still below 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 HOLX might be a better candidate to consider a long position.