We have been waiting for this for a year and finally the third quarter ended up showing a nice bump in the performance of small-cap stocks. Both the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 were up since the end of the second quarter, but small-cap stocks outperformed the large-cap stocks by double digits. This is important for hedge funds, which are big supporters of small-cap stocks, because their investors started pulling some of their capital out due to poor recent performance. It is very likely that equity hedge funds will deliver better risk adjusted returns in the second half of this year. In this article we are going to look at how this recent market trend affected the sentiment of hedge funds towards John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT), and what that likely means for the prospects of the company and its stock.
John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT) investors should be aware of a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. JBT was in 15 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 20 hedge funds in our database with JBT holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare JBT to other stocks including RealPage, Inc. (NASDAQ:RP), Wright Medical Group Inc (NASDAQ:WMGI), and Exelixis, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXEL) to get a better sense of its popularity.
Follow John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT)
Follow John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT)
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What have hedge funds been doing with John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT)?
At the end of the third quarter, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 25% decline from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JBT over the last 5 quarters. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the largest position in John Bean Technologies Corp (NYSE:JBT), worth close to $31.9 million. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Columbus Circle Investors, led by Principal Global Investors, which holds a $19.5 million position. Remaining peers with similar optimism encompass Ken Grossman and Glen Schneider’s SG Capital Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management. We should note that SG Capital Management is among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
