Is AXNX Stock A Buy or Sell?

With the fourth-quarter round of 13F filings behind us it is time to take a look at the stocks in which some of the best money managers in the world preferred to invest or sell heading into the first quarter of 2021. One of these stocks was Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX).

Is AXNX stock a buy? Prominent investors were in a pessimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets decreased by 2 in recent months. Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX) was in 26 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 28. Our calculations also showed that AXNX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings). There were 28 hedge funds in our database with AXNX positions at the end of the third quarter.

Henrik Rhenman of Rhenman & Partners Asset Management

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

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 26 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -7% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 23 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in AXNX a year ago. 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, Polar Capital, managed by Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley, holds the biggest position in Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX). Polar Capital has a $44.8 million position in the stock, comprising 0.3% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is James E. Flynn of Deerfield Management, with a $39.9 million position; 0.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that are bullish contain Bihua Chen’s Cormorant Asset Management, Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital and Henrik Rhenman’s Rhenman & Partners Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Blackcrane Capital allocated the biggest weight to Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX), around 12.23% of its 13F portfolio. Parian Global Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 1.92 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to AXNX.

Because Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of hedge funds who were dropping their entire stakes in the fourth quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Jeremy Green’s Redmile Group said goodbye to the biggest investment of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $37.8 million in stock, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $27.1 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 2 funds in the fourth quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX). We will take a look at Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI), SJW Group (NYSE:SJW), World Fuel Services Corporation (NYSE:INT), Grupo Simec S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:SIM), Kulicke and Soffa Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:KLIC), Viela Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIE), and Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc. (NYSE:TR). All of these stocks’ market caps match AXNX’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 14.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $150 million. That figure was $276 million in AXNX’s case. Kulicke and Soffa Industries Inc. (NASDAQ:KLIC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Grupo Simec S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE:SIM) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for AXNX is 66.6. 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 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.3% in 2021 through April 19th and still beat the market by 0.9 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on AXNX as the stock returned 17.5% since the end of Q4 (through 4/19) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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