Is CAC A Good Stock To Buy Now?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 817 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2020. What do these smart investors think about Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC)?

Is CAC a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were in an optimistic mood. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 2 lately. Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC) was in 14 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 13. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that CAC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). There were 12 hedge funds in our database with CAC positions at the end of the second quarter.

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

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Fred Cummings of Elizabeth Park Capital

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Now let’s view the latest hedge fund action surrounding Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC).

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

At third quarter’s end, a total of 14 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 17% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 11 hedge funds with a bullish position in CAC a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $12.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Basswood Capital with a $7.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Minerva Advisors, Royce & Associates, and Elizabeth Park Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Minerva Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC), around 2.96% of its 13F portfolio. Elizabeth Park Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 1.53 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to CAC.

Consequently, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Elizabeth Park Capital Management, managed by Fred Cummings, created the most valuable position in Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC). Elizabeth Park Capital Management had $2.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners also made a $0.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC). We will take a look at Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:DFIN), WideOpenWest, Inc. (NYSE:WOW), Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH), Cowen Inc. (NASDAQ:COWN), The First Bancshares, Inc. (MS) (NASDAQ:FBMS), Antares Pharma Inc (NASDAQ:ATRS), and Geopark Ltd (NYSE:GPRK). This group of stocks’ market values resemble CAC’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $62 million. That figure was $36 million in CAC’s case. Juniper Industrial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:JIH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The First Bancshares, Inc. (MS) (NASDAQ:FBMS) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Camden National Corporation (NASDAQ:CAC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for CAC is 60.3. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on CAC as the stock returned 22.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/8) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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