In this article you are going to find out whether hedge funds think Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) is a good investment right now. We like to check what the smart money thinks first before doing extensive research on a given stock. Although there have been several high profile failed hedge fund picks, the consensus picks among hedge fund investors have historically outperformed the market after adjusting for known risk attributes. It’s not surprising given that hedge funds have access to better information and more resources to predict the winners in the stock market.
Is Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) a buy here? Money managers were getting more bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets advanced by 1 in recent months. Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) was in 3 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 7. Our calculations also showed that EKSO 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 2 hedge funds in our database with EKSO positions at the end of the second quarter.
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
To most stock holders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, outdated investment vehicles of years past. While there are over 8000 funds with their doors open today, We look at the aristocrats of this group, approximately 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people oversee most of the smart money’s total capital, and by watching their highest performing investments, Insider Monkey has discovered various investment strategies that have historically surpassed the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points per annum since its inception in March 2017. Our portfolio of short stocks lost 13% since February 2017 (through November 17th) even though the market was up 65% during the same period. We just shared a list of 6 short targets in our latest quarterly update .
David Harding of Winton Capital Management
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What does smart money think about Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO)?
At third quarter’s end, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 50% from the second quarter of 2020. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in EKSO over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
More specifically, Puissance Capital Managementá was the largest shareholder of Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO), with a stake worth $3.7 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Puissance Capital Managementá was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $0.3 million. Winton Capital Management was also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Puissance Capital Managementá allocated the biggest weight to Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO), around 21.21% of its 13F portfolio. Winton Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0043 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EKSO.
As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds were leading the bulls’ herd. Renaissance Technologies, assembled the most valuable position in Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO). Renaissance Technologies had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) but similarly valued. These stocks are ImmuCell Corporation (NASDAQ:ICCC), Immuron Limited (NASDAQ:IMRN), Pintec Technology Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:PT), Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc (NYSE:BBW), Paramount Gold Nevada Corp (NYSE:PZG), UTStarcom Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:UTSI), and ICC Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICCH). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to EKSO’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICCC | 2 | 927 | 0 |
| IMRN | 2 | 1431 | 1 |
| PT | 1 | 31 | 0 |
| BBW | 9 | 10501 | 1 |
| PZG | 3 | 685 | 1 |
| UTSI | 3 | 1346 | 2 |
| ICCH | 3 | 1174 | 0 |
| Average | 3.3 | 2299 | 0.7 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 3.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2 million. That figure was $4 million in EKSO’s case. Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc (NYSE:BBW) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Pintec Technology Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:PT) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EKSO is 31.4. 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 28.1% in 2020 through November 23rd and still beat the market by 15.4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on EKSO as the stock returned 10.9% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/23) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
