Hedge Funds Keep Buying Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (COLL)

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 Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL).

Is Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL) a healthy stock for your portfolio? Hedge funds are in a bullish mood. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 2 lately. Our calculations also showed that COLL 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 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’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.

Joseph Edelman of Perceptive Advisors

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 trades like this one. 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. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a gander at the fresh hedge fund action regarding Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL).

What have hedge funds been doing with Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 20 hedge funds with a bullish position in COLL a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL) was held by Camber Capital Management, which reported holding $32.7 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Renaissance Technologies with a $25.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Perceptive Advisors, Rubric Capital Management, and Rock Springs Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Rubric Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL), around 3.13% of its 13F portfolio. Camber Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.95 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to COLL.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have jumped into Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL) headfirst. Camber Capital Management, managed by Stephen DuBois, established the most outsized position in Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL). Camber Capital Management had $32.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. David Rosen’s Rubric Capital Management also made a $19.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new COLL positions are Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Nick Thakore’s Diametric Capital, and Peter Algert and Kevin Coldiron’s Algert Coldiron Investors.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL). These stocks are AVROBIO, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVRO), Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE:BIG), Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:PTLA), and Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ:CGEN). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble COLL’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $87 million. That figure was $170 million in COLL’s case. AVROBIO, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVRO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Compugen Ltd. (NASDAQ:CGEN) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (NASDAQ:COLL) 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 gained 12.2% in 2020 through June 17th and still beat the market by 14.8 percentage points. Unfortunately COLL wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on COLL were disappointed as the stock returned 10% during the second quarter (through June 17th) 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 most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.

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