The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS) based on those filings.
Is BRBS a good stock to buy? Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS) has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment recently. Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 3. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that BRBS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Emanuel Friedman of EJF Capital
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Do Hedge Funds Think BRBS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of March, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 33% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BRBS over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money’s positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Phil Stone’s Fourthstone LLC has the largest position in Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS), worth close to $16.4 million, comprising 8.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Emanuel J. Friedman of EJF Capital, with a $9.2 million position; 0.7% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers that are bullish comprise Jeffrey Gendell’s Tontine Asset Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Fourthstone LLC allocated the biggest weight to Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS), around 8.13% of its 13F portfolio. EJF Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.67 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BRBS.
As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. EJF Capital, managed by Emanuel J. Friedman, assembled the most outsized position in Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS). EJF Capital had $9.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.
Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AQMS), Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP), The Cato Corporation (NYSE:CATO), Platinum Group Metals Limited (NYSE:PLG), Value Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:VALU), Vincerx Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:VINC), and Cerecor Inc. (NASDAQ:CERC). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to BRBS’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| AQMS | 5 | 4210 | 2 |
| ORMP | 4 | 2374 | -2 |
| CATO | 14 | 20138 | 2 |
| PLG | 6 | 5348 | -1 |
| VALU | 2 | 2401 | 0 |
| VINC | 16 | 88367 | 5 |
| CERC | 10 | 145224 | 2 |
| Average | 8.1 | 38295 | 1.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $38 million. That figure was $32 million in BRBS’s case. Vincerx Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:VINC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Value Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:VALU) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BRBS is 43.1. 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 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and still beat the market by 3.3 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on BRBS as the stock returned 17.5% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.