Is IBN Stock A Buy or Sell

The financial regulations require hedge funds and wealthy investors that exceeded the $100 million holdings threshold to file a report that shows their positions at the end of every quarter. Even though it isn’t the intention, these filings to a certain extent level the playing field for ordinary investors. The latest round of 13F filings disclosed the funds’ positions on December 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 887 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN) based on those filings.

Is IBN stock a buy? ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN) investors should be aware of an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 34. Our calculations also showed that IBN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

In the financial world there are a lot of gauges investors can use to analyze their holdings. Two of the less known gauges are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite investment managers can beat the broader indices by a significant amount (see the details here).

Robert Pohly of Samlyn Capital

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we heard that billionaire Peter Thiel is backing this psychedelic-drug startup. So, we are taking a closer look at this space. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. 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 website. With all of this in mind let’s check out the recent hedge fund action surrounding ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN).

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

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 21% from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in IBN over the last 22 quarters. So, let’s see which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners has the most valuable position in ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN), worth close to $192.6 million, amounting to 0.7% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Alua Capital Management, led by Tom Purcell and Marco Tablada, holding a $182.8 million position; 12.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other members of the smart money that are bullish comprise Robert Pohly’s Samlyn Capital, Howard Marks’s Oaktree Capital Management and Richard Driehaus’s Driehaus Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Dalton Investments allocated the biggest weight to ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN), around 17.46% of its 13F portfolio. Alua Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 12.79 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IBN.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. GQG Partners, managed by Rajiv Jain, initiated the biggest position in ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN). GQG Partners had $192.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Tom Purcell and Marco Tablada’s Alua Capital Management also initiated a $182.8 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new IBN positions are Patrick Degorce’s Theleme Partners, Josh Donfeld and David Rogers’s Castle Hook Partners, and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN). These stocks are Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX), Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC), UBS Group AG (NYSE:UBS), Southern Copper Corporation (NYSE:SCCO), Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE:WM), Koninklijke Philips NV (NYSE:PHG), and Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to IBN’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 27.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1276 million. That figure was $1081 million in IBN’s case. Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Koninklijke Philips NV (NYSE:PHG) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IBN is 56.6. 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 positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks gained 12.2% in 2021 through April 12th and beat the market again by 1.5 percentage points. Unfortunately IBN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 30 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IBN were disappointed as the stock returned -3.3% since the end of December (through 4/12) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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