Immunomedics, Inc. (IMMU): The Smart Money Is Quietly Loading Up On This Stock

The Insider Monkey team has completed processing the quarterly 13F filings for the September quarter submitted by the hedge funds and other money managers included in our extensive database. Most hedge funds have been producing disappointing net returns in recent years, however that was partly due to the poor performance of small-cap stocks in general. Well, small-cap stocks finally turned the corner and have been beating the large-cap stocks by more than 10 percentage points over the last 5 months.This means the relevancy of hedge funds’ public filings became inarguable, as they may reveal numerous high-potential stocks. The following article will discuss the smart money sentiment towards Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) .

Is Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) ready to rally soon? Prominent investors are getting more bullish. The number of long hedge fund positions that are disclosed in regulatory 13F filings moved up by 1 lately. At the end of this article we will also compare IMMU to other stocks including Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX), Allied Motion Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMOT), and Franklin Covey Co. (NYSE:FC) to get a better sense of its popularity.

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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How are hedge funds trading Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a 6% increase from the previous quarter. There were a total of 11 hedge funds with a bullish position in IMMU at the beginning of this year, so hedge fund ownership has jumped by more than 50% this year. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Behzad Aghazadeh’s venBio Select Advisor has the biggest position in Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU), worth close to $23.9 million, corresponding to 4.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is OrbiMed Advisors, led by Samuel Isaly, which holds a $12.4 million position. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Jason Karp’s Tourbillon Capital Partners, Ken Greenberg and David Kim’s Ghost Tree Capital, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are 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.

As industry-wide interest jumped, key hedge funds have been driving this bullishness. Nexthera Capital, led by Ori Hershkovitz, established the biggest position in Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU). Nexthera Capital had $4.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other fund with a new position in the stock is Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX), Allied Motion Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMOT), Franklin Covey Co. (NYSE:FC), and Global Sources Ltd. (Bermuda) (NASDAQ:GSOL). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to IMMU’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $21 million. That figure was $80 million in IMMU’s case. Agile Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:AGRX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Global Sources Ltd. (Bermuda) (NASDAQ:GSOL) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Immunomedics, Inc. (NASDAQ:IMMU) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.

Disclosure: None