Hedge Funds Are Nibbling On Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (BRKL)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 873 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of June 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) based on that data.

Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 15. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with BRKL positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that BRKL isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

Why do we pay any attention at all to hedge fund sentiment? Our research has shown that a select group of hedge fund holdings outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Bernard Horn of Polaris Capital Management

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

At Q2’s end, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in BRKL over the last 24 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Polaris Capital Management, managed by Bernard Horn, holds the most valuable position in Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL). Polaris Capital Management has a $18.5 million position in the stock, comprising 0.6% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Renaissance Technologies, which holds a $14.6 million position; less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining professional money managers with similar optimism consist of Fred Cummings’s Elizabeth Park Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Elizabeth Park Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL), around 1.58% of its 13F portfolio. Polaris Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.6 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRKL.

As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, assembled the largest position in Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL). Arrowstreet Capital had $1.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also initiated a $0.7 million position during the quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) but similarly valued. We will take a look at National Research Corporation (NASDAQ:NRC), NetGear, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTGR), First Bancorp (NASDAQ:FBNC), Standex International Corp. (NYSE:SXI), National Bank Holdings Corp (NYSE:NBHC), Nexa Resources S.A. (NYSE:NEXA), and Century Aluminum Co (NASDAQ:CENX). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to BRKL’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $48 million. That figure was $44 million in BRKL’s case. NetGear, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTGR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nexa Resources S.A. (NYSE:NEXA) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRKL is 48.7. 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and beat the market by 6.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BRKL, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 4% since the end of Q2 (through September 27th) and outperformed the market.

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