Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Medpace Holdings, Inc. (MEDP)

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 Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) based on that data.

Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 31. MEDP has seen a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. There were 25 hedge funds in our database with MEDP positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that MEDP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Today there are plenty of gauges shareholders use to grade their holdings. A couple of the less known gauges are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the top hedge fund managers can beat the market by a healthy amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates LP

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Chuck Schumer recently stated that marijuana legalization will be a Senate priority. So, we are checking out this under the radar stock that will benefit from this. 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a look at the recent hedge fund action surrounding Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP).

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -16% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 17 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in MEDP a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $76.2 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Fisher Asset Management with a $48.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Echo Street Capital Management, AQR Capital Management, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Shanda Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP), around 0.59% of its 13F portfolio. Prescott Group Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.58 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MEDP.

Since Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) has experienced falling interest from the smart money, it’s easy to see that there was a specific group of fund managers that elected to cut their full holdings heading into Q2. It’s worth mentioning that Valerie Malter’s Matarin Capital cut the largest position of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising close to $3.1 million in stock, and David Harding’s Winton Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund cut about $1.4 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 4 funds heading into Q2.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART), Agora, Inc. (NASDAQ:API), Primerica, Inc. (NYSE:PRI), HollyFrontier Corporation (NYSE:HFC), Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL), Kodiak Sciences Inc (NASDAQ:KOD), and Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation (NASDAQ:PPC). This group of stocks’ market values match MEDP’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $536 million. That figure was $266 million in MEDP’s case. Foot Locker, Inc. (NYSE:FL) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) is the least popular one with only 13 bullish hedge fund positions. Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MEDP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MEDP is 48. 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. Hedge funds were also right about betting on MEDP, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 11.5% since Q1 (through July 16th) and outperformed the market as well.

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

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