Hedge Funds Are Crazy About Heska Corp (HSKA)

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA).

Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic was previously 17. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. HSKA has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 17 hedge funds in our database with HSKA positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that HSKA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still 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). We have been able to outperform the passive index funds by tracking the moves of corporate insiders and hedge funds, and we believe small investors can benefit a lot from reading hedge fund investor letters and 13F filings.

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. 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. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at the key hedge fund action surrounding Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 65% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 15 hedge funds with a bullish position in HSKA a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Nine Ten Partners, managed by Brian Bares, Russell Mollen, and James Bradshaw, holds the most valuable position in Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA). Nine Ten Partners has a $147.5 million position in the stock, comprising 20.4% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Peter S. Park of Park West Asset Management, with a $28.4 million position; the fund has 0.9% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money with similar optimism encompass Josh Goldberg’s G2 Investment Partners Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Nine Ten Partners allocated the biggest weight to Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA), around 20.41% of its 13F portfolio. G2 Investment Partners Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.21 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HSKA.

Now, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Pinz Capital, managed by Matthew L Pinz, established the biggest position in Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA). Pinz Capital had $5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Frank Fu’s CaaS Capital also made a $4.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new HSKA positions are Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA) but similarly valued. These stocks are Five Prime Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FPRX), Community Health Systems (NYSE:CYH), Cardtronics plc (NASDAQ:CATM), Cerevel Therapeutics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CERE), Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:CORE), CBIZ, Inc. (NYSE:CBZ), and Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd. (NYSE:ARGO). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to HSKA’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $358 million. That figure was $284 million in HSKA’s case. Five Prime Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:FPRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CBIZ, Inc. (NYSE:CBZ) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Heska Corp (NASDAQ:HSKA) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HSKA is 86.9. 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and still beat the market by 6.7 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on HSKA as the stock returned 40.7% since the end of Q1 (through 7/9) 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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