A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended March 31, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC).
Is Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC) an attractive investment now? The smart money is getting less bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets shrunk by 1 lately. Our calculations also showed that BHC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.
In the financial world there are a lot of indicators shareholders can use to value their holdings. Two of the most useful indicators are hedge fund and insider trading sentiment. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite fund managers can outclass the market by a very impressive margin (see the details here).
We’re going to take a glance at the latest hedge fund action surrounding Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC).
How have hedgies been trading Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC)?
At Q1’s end, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of -3% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 27 hedge funds with a bullish position in BHC a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).
The largest stake in Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC) was held by Paulson & Co, which reported holding $514.7 million worth of stock at the end of March. It was followed by ValueAct Capital with a $445.4 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Glenview Capital, GoldenTree Asset Management, and OrbiMed Advisors.
Because Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC) has faced bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there were a few fund managers that decided to sell off their entire stakes by the end of the third quarter. Intriguingly, Stephen DuBois’s Camber Capital Management said goodbye to the biggest investment of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, totaling close to $18.5 million in stock, and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $12.1 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds by the end of the third quarter.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Andeavor Logistics LP (NYSE:ANDX), bluebird bio Inc (NASDAQ:BLUE), Coty Inc (NYSE:COTY), and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc (NYSE:HII). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to BHC’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANDX | 6 | 7757 | 0 |
| BLUE | 25 | 190064 | 9 |
| COTY | 24 | 688610 | 5 |
| HII | 31 | 708221 | 4 |
| Average | 21.5 | 398663 | 4.5 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.5 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $399 million. That figure was $1801 million in BHC’s case. Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc (NYSE:HII) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Andeavor Logistics LP (NYSE:ANDX) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE:BHC) 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. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 1.9% in Q2 through May 30th and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 3 percentage points. Unfortunately BHC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BHC were disappointed as the stock returned -13.2% 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 so far in Q2.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
