We at Insider Monkey have gone over 817 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON) based on that data.
Is Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON) undervalued? Money managers were taking a bullish view. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 1 recently. Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON) was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistics is 4. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that ETON 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 3 hedge funds in our database with ETON positions at the end of the second quarter.
Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.
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Nick Thakore of Diametric Capital
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How have hedgies been trading Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON)?
At Q3’s end, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. By comparison, 3 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in ETON a year ago. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Opaleye Management, managed by James A. Silverman, holds the biggest position in Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON). Opaleye Management has a $28.8 million position in the stock, comprising 5.6% of its 13F portfolio. On Opaleye Management’s heels is Nick Thakore of Diametric Capital, with a $0.2 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Opaleye Management allocated the biggest weight to Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON), around 5.62% of its 13F portfolio. Diametric Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.18 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ETON.
As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, established the biggest position in Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON). Citadel Investment Group had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Grupo Supervielle S.A. (NYSE:SUPV), GP Strategies Corporation (NYSE:GPX), National Bankshares Inc. (NASDAQ:NKSH), Jiayin Group Inc. (NASDAQ:JFIN), Sesen Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:SESN), Big 5 Sporting Goods Corporation (NASDAQ:BGFV), and Irsa Inversiones y Rprsntcins SA (NYSE:IRS). This group of stocks’ market caps match ETON’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| SUPV | 3 | 414 | -1 |
| GPX | 9 | 49256 | -2 |
| NKSH | 3 | 11806 | 1 |
| JFIN | 1 | 34 | -2 |
| SESN | 6 | 7842 | 1 |
| BGFV | 9 | 18141 | 3 |
| IRS | 5 | 10713 | 0 |
| Average | 5.1 | 14029 | 0 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $14 million. That figure was $29 million in ETON’s case. GP Strategies Corporation (NYSE:GPX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Jiayin Group Inc. (NASDAQ:JFIN) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Eton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ETON is 54.8. 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 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 30.7% in 2020 through November 27th and surpassed the market again by 16.1 percentage points. Unfortunately ETON wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); ETON investors were disappointed as the stock returned 0.6% since the end of September (through 11/27) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market in 2020.
Follow Eton Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ETON)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
