Hedge Funds Aren’t Done Buying Repligen Corporation (RGEN)

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. 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 Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN).

Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) has seen an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) was in 38 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was 37. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 37 hedge funds in our database with RGEN holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that RGEN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Today there are tons of tools investors have at their disposal to analyze publicly traded companies. A pair of the best tools are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite hedge fund managers can outpace the S&P 500 by a healthy margin (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Keeping this in mind let’s analyze the key hedge fund action encompassing Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 38 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 3% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards RGEN over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) was held by Select Equity Group, which reported holding $243.3 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by 12 West Capital Management with a $212.3 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Impax Asset Management, Renaissance Technologies, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 12 West Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN), around 10.12% of its 13F portfolio. Miura Global Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.94 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to RGEN.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, created the biggest call position in Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN). D E Shaw had $1.9 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Matthew Hulsizer’s PEAK6 Capital Management also initiated a $1.2 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new RGEN investors: Qing Li’s Sciencast Management, Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management, and Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) but similarly valued. These stocks are Trex Company, Inc. (NYSE:TREX), CBOE Global Markets Inc (NASDAQ:CBOE), American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE:AMH), Cemex SAB de CV (NYSE:CX), Five9 Inc (NASDAQ:FIVN), Lithia Motors Inc (NYSE:LAD), and East West Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EWBC). This group of stocks’ market caps match RGEN’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 31 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $935 million. That figure was $1039 million in RGEN’s case. Five9 Inc (NASDAQ:FIVN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Trex Company, Inc. (NYSE:TREX) is the least popular one with only 23 bullish hedge fund positions. Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for RGEN is 70.1. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and beat the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately RGEN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on RGEN were disappointed as the stock returned -1.4% since the end of March (through 6/25) 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.