Is Amkor Technology, Inc. (AMKR) A Good Stock To Buy?

Before we spend countless hours researching a company, we like to analyze what insiders, hedge funds and billionaire investors think of the stock first. This is a necessary first step in our investment process because our research has shown that the elite investors’ consensus returns have been exceptional. In the following paragraphs, we find out what the billionaire investors and hedge funds think of Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR).

Is Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR) worth your attention right now? Hedge funds are reducing their bets on the stock. The number of bullish hedge fund bets shrunk by 1 lately. Our calculations also showed that AMKR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). AMKR was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. There were 29 hedge funds in our database with AMKR positions at the end of the previous quarter.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

If you’d ask most traders, hedge funds are viewed as slow, old financial tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds in operation at the moment, Our researchers choose to focus on the crème de la crème of this group, around 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people control most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by watching their unrivaled picks, Insider Monkey has identified numerous investment strategies that have historically outpaced the market. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy exceeded the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points annually since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 36% since February 2017 (through May 18th) even though the market was up 30% during the same period. We just shared a list of 8 short targets in our latest quarterly update .

Matthew Hulsizer of PEAK6 Capital

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, 2020’s unprecedented market conditions provide us with the highest number of trading opportunities in a decade. So we are checking out trades like this one. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when the S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. Now we’re going to check out the key hedge fund action surrounding Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR).

What have hedge funds been doing with Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR)?

Heading into the second quarter of 2020, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -3% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards AMKR over the last 18 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, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital has the largest position in Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR), worth close to $16.3 million, corresponding to less than 0.1%% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is D. E. Shaw of D E Shaw, with a $14.3 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that hold long positions consist of Renaissance Technologies, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Quantinno Capital allocated the biggest weight to Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR), around 0.17% of its 13F portfolio. Algert Coldiron Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.14 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AMKR.

Since Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR) has faced declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there exists a select few money managers that slashed their entire stakes in the first quarter. Interestingly, Doug Gordon, Jon Hilsabeck and Don Jabro’s Shellback Capital dropped the biggest stake of all the hedgies monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $19.5 million in stock. Minhua Zhang’s fund, Weld Capital Management, also cut its stock, about $1.1 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in the first quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR) but similarly valued. These stocks are First Interstate Bancsystem Inc (NASDAQ:FIBK), Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC), National General Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:NGHC), and Northwest Natural Holding Company (NYSE:NWN). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble AMKR’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $116 million. That figure was $86 million in AMKR’s case. Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Interstate Bancsystem Inc (NASDAQ:FIBK) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Amkor Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR) is more popular among hedge funds. Our calculations showed that top 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks returned 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May but still managed to beat the market by 13.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on AMKR as the stock returned 35.8% so far in Q2 (through the end of May) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

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