Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Core Laboratories N.V. (CLB)

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 866 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of March 31st. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB) based on that data.

Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB) has experienced an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB) was in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 25. Our calculations also showed that CLB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

John Rogers of Ariel Investments

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Do Hedge Funds Think CLB Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 42% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 16 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in CLB a year ago. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Ariel Investments, managed by John W. Rogers, holds the largest position in Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB). Ariel Investments has a $109.1 million position in the stock, comprising 1.1% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Ako Capital, managed by Nicolai Tangen, which holds a $29.3 million position; the fund has 0.4% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other peers that are bullish comprise Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Ariel Investments allocated the biggest weight to Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB), around 1.07% of its 13F portfolio. Ako Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.36 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CLB.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the most valuable position in Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB). Millennium Management had $0.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new CLB investors: Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB). We will take a look at Marcus & Millichap Inc (NYSE:MMI), Sandstorm Gold Ltd. (NYSE:SAND), BP Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:BPMP), Golden Ocean Group Ltd (NASDAQ:GOGL), S & T Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:STBA), Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:YMAB), and The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble CLB’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 10.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $66 million. That figure was $176 million in CLB’s case. Sandstorm Gold Ltd. (NYSE:SAND) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand S & T Bancorp Inc (NASDAQ:STBA) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Core Laboratories N.V. (NYSE:CLB) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CLB is 80.4. 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 28.5% in 2021 through July 23rd and still managed to beat the market by 10.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on CLB, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 15% since the end of March (through July 23rd) and outperformed the market as well.

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