Hedge Funds Are Crazy About OraSure Technologies, Inc. (OSUR)

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. We at Insider Monkey have plowed through 823 13F filings that hedge funds and well-known value investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, when the S&P 500 Index was trading around the 3100 level. Stocks kept going up since then. In this article we look at how hedge funds traded OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) and determine whether the smart money was really smart about this stock.

Is OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) a buy, sell, or hold? Hedge funds were taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund positions advanced by 2 in recent months. OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistics is 25. Our calculations also showed that OSUR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). There were 19 hedge funds in our database with OSUR positions at the end of the first quarter.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

At the moment there are a multitude of indicators market participants use to evaluate publicly traded companies. Two of the best indicators are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite hedge fund managers can outpace the broader indices by a healthy amount (see the details here).

Israel Englander of Millennium Management

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost precious metals prices. So, we are checking out this junior gold mining stock. We are also checking out this lithium company which could benefit from the electric car adoption. We go through lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website to get excerpts of these letters in your inbox. With all of this in mind we’re going to analyze the fresh hedge fund action encompassing OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR).

How are hedge funds trading OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR)?

At Q2’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from the first quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards OSUR over the last 20 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Renaissance Technologies held the most valuable stake in OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR), which was worth $45.2 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was D E Shaw which amassed $26.4 million worth of shares. Point72 Asset Management, Archon Capital Management, and Millennium Management 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 Archon Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR), around 2% of its 13F portfolio. Sio Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.56 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OSUR.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have jumped into OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) headfirst. Sio Capital, managed by Michael Castor, initiated the most valuable position in OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR). Sio Capital had $5.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Guy Levy’s Soleus Capital also initiated a $2.6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new OSUR positions are Matthew L Pinz’s Pinz Capital, John W. Rende’s Copernicus Capital Management, and Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR). We will take a look at Morphic Holding, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORF), TechTarget Inc (NASDAQ:TTGT), Zynex, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZYXI), National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC), ChipMOS Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:IMOS), German American Bancorp., Inc. (NASDAQ:GABC), and TPI Composites, Inc. (NASDAQ:TPIC). This group of stocks’ market caps match OSUR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $49 million. That figure was $141 million in OSUR’s case. TPI Composites, Inc. (NASDAQ:TPIC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ChipMOS Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:IMOS) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for OSUR is 82.2. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 24.8% in 2020 through the end of September and still beat the market by 19.3 percentage points. Unfortunately OSUR wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on OSUR were disappointed as the stock returned 4.6% during the third quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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