Is Community Bankers Trust Corp. (ESXB) A Good Stock To Buy?

In this article we will check out the progression of hedge fund sentiment towards Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB) and determine whether it is a good investment right now. We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before spending days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more incentives and resources than the average investor. The funds have access to expert networks and get tips from industry insiders. They also employ numerous Ivy League graduates and MBAs. Like everyone else, hedge funds perform miserably at times, but their consensus picks have historically outperformed the market after risk adjustments.

Is ESXB a good stock to buy? Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 7. ESXB has seen an increase in hedge fund sentiment recently. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with ESXB holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that ESXB isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

Fred DiSanto of Ancora Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $24 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. With all of this in mind let’s take a peek at the latest hedge fund action regarding Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB).

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

At Q1’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 20% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 7 hedge funds with a bullish position in ESXB a year ago. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Fourthstone LLC, managed by Phil Stone, holds the biggest position in Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB). Fourthstone LLC has a $11.2 million position in the stock, comprising 5.5% of its 13F portfolio. On Fourthstone LLC’s heels is Frederick DiSanto of Ancora Advisors, with a $4 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions include Renaissance Technologies, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Anton Schutz’s Mendon Capital Advisors. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Fourthstone LLC allocated the biggest weight to Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB), around 5.54% of its 13F portfolio. Mendon Capital Advisors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ESXB.

Now, some big names have jumped into Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB) headfirst. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, established the largest position in Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB). Arrowstreet Capital had $0.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB). These stocks are Gencor Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:GENC), Chemung Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:CHMG), Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD), OptiNose, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPTN), Comstock Mining, Inc. (NYSE:LODE), Annovis Bio, Inc. (NYSE:ANVS), and Spark Networks SE (NYSE:LOV). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to ESXB’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $15 million. That figure was $20 million in ESXB’s case. Quad/Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:QUAD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Gencor Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:GENC) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Community Bankers Trust Corp. (NASDAQ:ESXB) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ESXB is 56.7. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and still beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ESXB as the stock returned 33.5% since the end of Q1 (through 6/25) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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