Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the second quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) based on that data.
ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 23. VRAY shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest lately. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with VRAY holdings at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that VRAY isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).
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Justin John Ferayorni of Tamarack Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think VRAY 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 first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 12 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in VRAY a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) was held by Hudson Executive Capital, which reported holding $97.5 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Pura Vida Investments with a $69.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Royce & Associates, Tamarack Capital Management, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Hudson Executive Capital allocated the biggest weight to ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY), around 6.48% of its 13F portfolio. Tamarack Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 3.74 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VRAY.
As industrywide interest jumped, key money managers have jumped into ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) headfirst. Balyasny Asset Management, managed by Dmitry Balyasny, initiated the most outsized position in ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY). Balyasny Asset Management had $4.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Efrem Kamen’s Pura Vida Investments also made a $4.6 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VRAY positions are Zachary Miller’s Parian Global Management, Richard SchimeláandáLawrence Sapanski’s Cinctive Capital Management, and Devesh Gandhi’s SilverArc Capital.
Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) but similarly valued. These stocks are Funko, Inc. (NASDAQ:FNKO), Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp. (NYSE:AGM), Phathom Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:PHAT), Premier Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:PFC), 908 Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:MASS), Denny’s Corporation (NASDAQ:DENN), and Varex Imaging Corporation (NASDAQ:VREX). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to VRAY’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| FNKO | 19 | 177042 | 5 |
| AGM | 7 | 12492 | 0 |
| PHAT | 12 | 336318 | -5 |
| PFC | 12 | 65293 | 2 |
| MASS | 13 | 166684 | -1 |
| DENN | 20 | 106019 | 0 |
| VREX | 16 | 135484 | -6 |
| Average | 14.1 | 142762 | -0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $143 million. That figure was $241 million in VRAY’s case. Denny’s Corporation (NASDAQ:DENN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corp. (NYSE:AGM) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. ViewRay, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRAY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VRAY is 76.9. 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. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and beat the market again by 1.6 percentage points. Unfortunately VRAY wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VRAY were disappointed as the stock returned 3.2% 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
