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 Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS) based on that data.
Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS) was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 20. XERS has seen a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds of late. There were 11 hedge funds in our database with XERS positions at the end of the first quarter. Our calculations also showed that XERS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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John Petry of Sessa Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think XERS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of June, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -9% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 20 hedge funds with a bullish position in XERS a year ago. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, James E. Flynn’s 0 has the most valuable position in Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS), worth close to $26.7 million, amounting to 0.5% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is 0, managed by John Petry, which holds a $14.9 million position; the fund has 0.6% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism comprise Jeremy Green’s 0, and Israel Englander’s 0. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Sessa Capital allocated the biggest weight to Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS), around 0.56% of its 13F portfolio. Deerfield Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.47 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to XERS.
Seeing as Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the smart money, logic holds that there was a specific group of hedgies who were dropping their entire stakes heading into Q3. It’s worth mentioning that Justin John Ferayorni’s Tamarack Capital Management sold off the largest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, comprising about $1.6 million in stock, and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $0.1 million worth. These moves are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds heading into Q3.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Seelos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEEL), Ocwen Financial Corporation (NYSE:OCN), Laird Superfood, Inc. (NYSE:LSF), BlueCity Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:BLCT), Platinum Group Metals Limited (NYSE:PLG), Alico, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALCO), and First Bank (NASDAQ:FRBA). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble XERS’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEEL | 13 | 39522 | 2 |
| OCN | 10 | 48688 | 0 |
| LSF | 5 | 10254 | 1 |
| BLCT | 3 | 831 | 1 |
| PLG | 5 | 5180 | -1 |
| ALCO | 7 | 11099 | 1 |
| FRBA | 6 | 8531 | 1 |
| Average | 7 | 17729 | 0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $18 million. That figure was $56 million in XERS’s case. Seelos Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEEL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BlueCity Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:BLCT) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:XERS) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for XERS is 54. 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 positive signal but 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 25.7% in 2021 through September 27th and beat the market again by 6.2 percentage points. Unfortunately XERS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on XERS were disappointed as the stock returned -35.6% since the end of June (through 9/27) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
