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 September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD).
CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that CNMD isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Veoneer, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNE), Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), and ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) to gather more data points.
At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Now we’re going to check out the recent hedge fund action encompassing CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD).
Do Hedge Funds Think CNMD Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of September, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CNMD over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management has the largest position in CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD), worth close to $40.9 million, comprising less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Iron Triangle Partners, led by Kevin Molloy, holding a $24.9 million position; 3.6% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Kris Jenner, Gordon Bussard, Graham McPhail’s Rock Springs Capital Management, Steve Zheng’s Deepcurrents Investment Group and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Iron Triangle Partners allocated the biggest weight to CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD), around 3.57% of its 13F portfolio. Deepcurrents Investment Group is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.59 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CNMD.
Due to the fact that CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) has witnessed a decline in interest from hedge fund managers, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies who were dropping their positions entirely heading into Q4. Intriguingly, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group dumped the biggest stake of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at an estimated $64.9 million in stock. Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s fund, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, also dumped its stock, about $1.4 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) but similarly valued. These stocks are Veoneer, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNE), Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB), Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC), and Focus Financial Partners Inc. (NASDAQ:FOCS). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to CNMD’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| VNE | 24 | 439490 | 12 |
| PRFT | 21 | 184710 | 3 |
| IBRX | 5 | 9484 | -2 |
| ABG | 22 | 995594 | -4 |
| FHB | 14 | 165509 | 4 |
| TKC | 9 | 22874 | 2 |
| FOCS | 16 | 101085 | -3 |
| Average | 15.9 | 274107 | 1.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $274 million. That figure was $180 million in CNMD’s case. Veoneer, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CNMD is 66.2. 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 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CNMD as the stock returned 8.5% since the end of Q3 (through 12/31) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
