Here is What Hedge Funds Think About ICU Medical, Inc. (ICUI)

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) based on those filings.

ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) has experienced an increase in enthusiasm from smart money in recent months. ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 35. There were 22 hedge funds in our database with ICUI holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that ICUI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Steven Cohen of Point72 Asset Management

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, economists warn of inflation flare up. So, we are checking out this backdoor gold play that has hit peak gains of 718% in a little over a year. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Now we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action regarding ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 18% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 25 hedge funds with a bullish position in ICUI a year ago. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, Partner Fund Management held the most valuable stake in ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI), which was worth $59.7 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Nitorum Capital which amassed $51.9 million worth of shares. Redmile Group, Point72 Asset Management, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Tamarack Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI), around 2.95% of its 13F portfolio. Nitorum Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 2.65 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ICUI.

Consequently, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, established the biggest position in ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI). Point72 Asset Management had $37.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Christopher James’s Partner Fund Management also initiated a $14.1 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Arthur B Cohen and Joseph Healey’s Healthcor Management LP, and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI). We will take a look at WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE:WCC), Cricut, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRCT), Medallia, Inc. (NYSE:MDLA), Canada Goose Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GOOS), Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. (NYSE:MSGS), Avient Corporation (NYSE:AVNT), and Wintrust Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:WTFC). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to ICUI’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 24 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $417 million. That figure was $382 million in ICUI’s case. Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. (NYSE:MSGS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Cricut, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRCT) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. ICU Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICUI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ICUI is 51.3. 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. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 24% in 2021 through July 9th and beat the market again by 6.7 percentage points. Unfortunately ICUI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ICUI were disappointed as the stock returned 0.8% since the end of March (through 7/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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