After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of March 31st. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN).
Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 19. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that SIEN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates
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Do Hedge Funds Think SIEN Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 40% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 9 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in SIEN 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.
More specifically, Granite Point Capital was the largest shareholder of Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN), with a stake worth $14.9 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Granite Point Capital was Rima Senvest Management, which amassed a stake valued at $14.7 million. Royce & Associates, Driehaus Capital, and Millennium Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Granite Point Capital allocated the biggest weight to Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN), around 0.56% of its 13F portfolio. Soleus Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.5 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SIEN.
As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Rima Senvest Management, managed by Richard Mashaal, established the biggest position in Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN). Rima Senvest Management had $14.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital also made a $11.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new SIEN investors: Steven Boyd’s Armistice Capital, Guy Levy’s Soleus Capital, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN). We will take a look at Concrete Pumping Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BBCP), Barnes & Noble Education Inc (NYSE:BNED), DASAN Zhone Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ:DZSI), Adicet Bio Inc. (NASDAQ:ACET), Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VRCA), CNB Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:CCNE), and Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:TNXP). All of these stocks’ market caps match SIEN’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BBCP | 14 | 60722 | 4 |
| BNED | 16 | 47123 | 3 |
| DZSI | 12 | 48970 | 7 |
| ACET | 16 | 156844 | 7 |
| VRCA | 7 | 80284 | 3 |
| CCNE | 9 | 11190 | 1 |
| TNXP | 7 | 14182 | 6 |
| Average | 11.6 | 59902 | 4.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $60 million. That figure was $90 million in SIEN’s case. Barnes & Noble Education Inc (NYSE:BNED) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VRCA) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Sientra Inc (NASDAQ:SIEN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SIEN is 90. 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. 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 23.8% in 2021 through July 16th and still beat the market by 7.7 percentage points. Unfortunately SIEN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on SIEN were disappointed as the stock returned 1% since the end of the first quarter (through 7/16) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.
Follow Sientra Inc. (NASDAQ:SIEN)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
