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 September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) .
Is CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) undervalued? The best stock pickers seem to be getting less optimistic. The number of bullish hedge fund positions decreased inched down by one last quarter. In this way, there were 15 hedge funds in our database with CNMD positions at the end of September. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as Multi-Color Corporation (NASDAQ:LABL), Orion Engineered Carbons SA (NYSE:OEC), and Momo Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:MOMO) to gather more data points.
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At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.
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With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at the new action regarding CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD).
What have hedge funds been doing with CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD)?
As stated earlier, heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, down by 6% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in CNMD over the last 5 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Scopia Capital, led by Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich, holds the most valuable position in CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD). Scopia Capital has a $111.1 million position in the stock, comprising 2% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Stephen DuBois’ Camber Capital Management, which disclosed a $30 million position; 1.3% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions contain Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management, Joe Huber’s Huber Capital Management, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.
Due to the fact that CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) has witnessed bearish sentiment from the aggregate hedge fund industry, logic holds that there were a few funds that elected to cut their entire stakes last quarter. At the top of the heap, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management dumped the largest investment of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, totaling about $13.6 million in stock. Scott Lawrence Swid’s fund, SLS Management, also dumped its stock, about $4.6 million worth.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Multi-Color Corporation (NASDAQ:LABL), Orion Engineered Carbons SA (NYSE:OEC), Momo Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:MOMO), and Adeptus Health Inc (NYSE:ADPT). This group of stocks’ market valuations match CNMD’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| LABL | 7 | 45924 | 3 |
| OEC | 12 | 121102 | -1 |
| MOMO | 19 | 233825 | 10 |
| ADPT | 13 | 183864 | -11 |
As you can see these stocks had an average of 13 funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $146 million, versus $206 million in CNMD’s case. Momo Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:MOMO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Multi-Color Corporation (NASDAQ:LABL) is the least popular one with only seven funds holding shares. CONMED Corporation (NASDAQ:CNMD) 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. In this regard Momo Inc (ADR) (NASDAQ:MOMO) might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.
Disclosure: none
