Hedge Funds Getting Bullish On Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OPNT)

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT).

Is Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know are taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 1 recently. Our calculations also showed that OPNT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

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 51 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that’ll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 36% through May 18th. That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out stocks recommended/scorned by legendary Bill Miller. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Keeping this in mind we’re going to check out the fresh hedge fund action regarding Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT).

How have hedgies been trading Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 4 hedge funds with a bullish position in OPNT a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Timothy P. Lynch’s Stonepine Capital has the number one position in Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT), worth close to $3.6 million, accounting for 3.9% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Bradley Louis Radoff of Fondren Management, with a $3 million position; 7.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Renaissance Technologies, Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Fondren Management allocated the biggest weight to Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT), around 7.65% of its 13F portfolio. Stonepine Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 3.86 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OPNT.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Stonepine Capital, managed by Timothy P. Lynch, assembled the most valuable position in Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT). Stonepine Capital had $3.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Envision Solar International, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVSI), Soligenix, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNGX), Synacor Inc (NASDAQ:SYNC), and Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble OPNT’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3 million. That figure was $7 million in OPNT’s case. Envision Solar International, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVSI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Vuzix Corporation (NASDAQ:VUZI) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPNT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately OPNT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on OPNT were disappointed as the stock returned 16% during the same time period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

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