Here is What Hedge Funds Think About ORBCOMM Inc (ORBC)

The 700+ hedge funds and money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the third quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of September 30. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund positions. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC) .

Is ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC) a buy, sell, or hold? The best stock pickers are turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions increased by 2 in recent months. ORBCwas in 18 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 16 hedge funds in our database with ORBC holdings at the end of the previous quarter. 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 Zoe’s Kitchen Inc (NYSE:ZOES), Walker & Dunlop Inc. (NYSE:WD), and Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) to gather more data points.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

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What does the smart money think about ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 18 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a rise of 13% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in ORBC over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, William C. Martin’s Raging Capital Management has the biggest position in ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC), worth close to $41 million, amounting to 5.7% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is John W. Rogers’ Ariel Investments  holding a $30.4 million position. Other peers that are bullish include Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management, Mike Masters’ Masters Capital Management and Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates. We should note that Raging Capital Management is among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Now, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies assembled the largest position in ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC). Renaissance Technologies had $2.8 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also initiated a $1.4 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new ORBC investors: Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Michael Platt and William Reeves’ BlueCrest Capital Mgmt..

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC). We will take a look at Zoe’s Kitchen Inc (NYSE:ZOES), Walker & Dunlop Inc. (NYSE:WD), Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC), and Keryx Biopharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:KERX). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ORBC’s market value.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $66 million. That figure was $133 million in ORBC’s case. Altra Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AIMC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Zoe’s Kitchen Inc (NYSE:ZOES) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. ORBCOMM Inc (NASDAQ:ORBC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard AIMC might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None