Is Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC) a good investment right now? We check hedge fund and billionaire investor sentiment before delving into hours of research. Hedge funds spend millions of dollars on Ivy League graduates, expert networks, and get tips from investment bankers and industry insiders. Sure they sometimes fail miserably, but their consensus stock picks historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk factors.
Is Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC) a cheap investment now? Investors who are in the know are buying. The number of bullish hedge fund positions inched up by 4 recently. Our calculations also showed that IVAC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds. IVAC was in 10 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. There were 6 hedge funds in our database with IVAC positions at the end of the previous quarter.
To most market participants, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, outdated financial tools of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds in operation at present, We look at the aristocrats of this group, about 750 funds. These hedge fund managers manage the majority of the smart money’s total capital, and by paying attention to their inimitable investments, Insider Monkey has uncovered many investment strategies that have historically outstripped Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s flagship hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points annually since its inception in May 2014 through June 18th. We were able to generate large returns even by identifying short candidates. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 28.2% since February 2017 (through June 18th) even though the market was up nearly 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 5 short targets in our latest quarterly update and they are already down an average of 8.2% in a month whereas our long picks outperformed the market by 2.5 percentage points in this volatile 5 week period (our long picks also beat the market by 15 percentage points so far this year).
Let’s take a look at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC).
What does smart money think about Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC)?
At the end of the first quarter, a total of 10 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 67% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in IVAC over the last 15 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
Among these funds, Royce & Associates held the most valuable stake in Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC), which was worth $11.8 million at the end of the first quarter. On the second spot was Becker Drapkin Management which amassed $5.6 million worth of shares. Moreover, Renaissance Technologies, Ancora Advisors, and D E Shaw were also bullish on Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC), allocating a large percentage of their portfolios to this stock.
Consequently, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. ExodusPoint Capital, managed by Michael Gelband, assembled the largest position in Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC). ExodusPoint Capital had $0.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt. also initiated a $0.2 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC). These stocks are StoneCastle Financial Corp (NASDAQ:BANX), Erytech Pharma S.A. (NASDAQ:ERYP), Hawthorn Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:HWBK), and Asanko Gold Inc (NYSE:AKG). This group of stocks’ market valuations match IVAC’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BANX | 1 | 869 | 0 |
| ERYP | 2 | 4922 | 0 |
| HWBK | 2 | 4780 | 1 |
| AKG | 7 | 16005 | -1 |
| Average | 3 | 6644 | 0 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $7 million. That figure was $24 million in IVAC’s case. Asanko Gold Inc (NYSE:AKG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand StoneCastle Financial Corp (NASDAQ:BANX) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 6.2% in Q2 through June 19th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 3 percentage points. Unfortunately IVAC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IVAC were disappointed as the stock returned -22.7% during the same period and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 13 of these stocks already outperformed the market in Q2.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
