The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the second quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of June 30th. 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 Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL).
Is Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL) a marvelous stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions improved by 1 lately. Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 25. Our calculations also showed that VCEL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 18 hedge funds in our database with VCEL holdings at the end of March.
To the average investor there are many formulas investors can use to size up publicly traded companies. A couple of the less utilized formulas are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can outclass the broader indices by a superb margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 185.4% since March 2017 (through August 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 79 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website.
David Siegel of Two Sigma Advisors
Keeping this in mind let’s review the key hedge fund action surrounding Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL).
Do Hedge Funds Think VCEL Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At second quarter’s end, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 6% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VCEL over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder of Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL), with a stake worth $38.4 million reported as of the end of June. Trailing Fisher Asset Management was Intrinsic Edge Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $13.7 million. Kent Lake Capital, Two Sigma Advisors, and PDT Partners 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 Kent Lake Capital allocated the biggest weight to Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL), around 4.42% of its 13F portfolio. Intrinsic Edge Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.8 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VCEL.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. AlphaCrest Capital Management, managed by Mika Toikka, assembled the most valuable position in Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL). AlphaCrest Capital Management had $1.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new VCEL investors: Jinghua Yan’s TwinBeech Capital, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL). These stocks are Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (NASDAQ:SHEN), At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME), CorVel Corporation (NASDAQ:CRVL), Bloomin’ Brands Inc (NASDAQ:BLMN), Bally’s Corporation (NYSE:BALY), Rush Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ:RUSHA), and Afya Limited (NASDAQ:AFYA). All of these stocks’ market caps match VCEL’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SHEN | 7 | 122482 | -1 |
| HOME | 41 | 910361 | 11 |
| CRVL | 15 | 160423 | 5 |
| BLMN | 36 | 625166 | 4 |
| BALY | 30 | 577022 | 12 |
| RUSHA | 17 | 88825 | 0 |
| AFYA | 6 | 54935 | 1 |
| Average | 21.7 | 362745 | 4.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $363 million. That figure was $87 million in VCEL’s case. At Home Group Inc. (NYSE:HOME) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Afya Limited (NASDAQ:AFYA) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VCEL is 47.4. 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 negative signal and 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and surpassed the market again by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately VCEL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); VCEL investors were disappointed as the stock returned -2.3% since the end of June (through 10/22) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.
Follow Vericel Corp (NASDAQ:VCEL)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
