Hedge Funds Have Never Been This Bullish On Oxford Immunotec Global (OXFD)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 821 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of March 31st, 2020. In this article we are going to take a look at smart money sentiment towards Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD).

Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Our calculations also showed that OXFD 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.

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 58 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 underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter. Even if you aren’t comfortable with shorting stocks, you should at least avoid initiating long positions in stocks that are in our short portfolio.

James E. Flynn of Deerfield Management

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Europe is set to become the world’s largest cannabis market, so we check out this European marijuana stock pitch. We take a look at lists like the 10 most profitable companies in the world to identify the compounders that are likely to deliver double digit returns. 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. Now let’s take a look at the new hedge fund action encompassing Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD).

How are hedge funds trading Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD)?

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 20 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 18% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in OXFD a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley’s Polar Capital has the largest position in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), worth close to $23.8 million, corresponding to 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Vishal Saluja and Pham Quang of Endurant Capital Management, with a $15.7 million position; 7.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism include Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, Richard Mashaal’s Rima Senvest Management and Mitchell Blutt’s Consonance Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Endurant Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD), around 7.12% of its 13F portfolio. Stonepine Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.67 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OXFD.

Consequently, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Stonepine Capital, managed by Timothy P. Lynch, established the most valuable position in Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD). Stonepine Capital had $3.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. James E. Flynn’s Deerfield Management also made a $1.4 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new OXFD positions are Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) but similarly valued. These stocks are MutualFirst Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MFSF), W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI), Carter Bank & Trust (NASDAQ:CARE), and Dynex Capital Inc (NYSE:DX). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to OXFD’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $16 million. That figure was $102 million in OXFD’s case. W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand MutualFirst Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MFSF) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Oxford Immunotec Global PLC (NASDAQ:OXFD) is more popular among hedge funds. 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 returned 12.2% in 2020 through June 17th but still managed to beat the market by 14.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on OXFD as the stock returned 44.6% so far in Q2 (through June 17th) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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