Is Chart Industries, Inc. (GTLS) A Good Stock To Buy?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 867 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) based on that data.

Is GTLS a good stock to buy? Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) investors should pay attention to a decrease in hedge fund interest in recent months. Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 27. Our calculations also showed that GTLS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. Keeping this in mind let’s analyze the new hedge fund action encompassing Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS).

Ken Fisher of Fisher Asset Management

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -19% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 20 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in GTLS a year ago. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) was held by Fisher Asset Management, which reported holding $191.9 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Driehaus Capital with a $67.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included GAMCO Investors, Brasada Capital Management, and Encompass Capital Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Brasada Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS), around 2.48% of its 13F portfolio. Aubrey Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 2.17 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to GTLS.

Because Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) has faced falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, it’s easy to see that there were a few hedgies who were dropping their full holdings by the end of the third quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Ira Unschuld’s Brant Point Investment Management dropped the largest stake of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $7.3 million in stock, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund dumped about $2.3 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 5 funds by the end of the third quarter.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) but similarly valued. These stocks are BlackLine, Inc. (NASDAQ:BL), Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE:NLSN), The Descartes Systems Group Inc (NASDAQ:DSGX), Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS), Colfax Corporation (NYSE:CFX), nCino, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCNO), and Frontier Communications Parent Inc. (NASDAQ:FYBR). This group of stocks’ market values match GTLS’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 23.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1093 million. That figure was $350 million in GTLS’s case. Frontier Communications Parent Inc. (NASDAQ:FYBR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand The Descartes Systems Group Inc (NASDAQ:DSGX) is the least popular one with only 14 bullish hedge fund positions. Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for GTLS is 38.2. 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. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. 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 29.6% in 2021 and surpassed the market again by 3.6 percentage points. Unfortunately GTLS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); GTLS investors were disappointed as the stock returned -16.5% since the end of September (through 12/31) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2021.

Suggested Articles:

• 15 Largest Employee Owned Companies
• 10 Best Cybersecurity Stocks To Buy Now
• 10 Best Cheap Stocks To Buy Now

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