Is IntriCon Corporation (IIN) A Good Investment?

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 March 31st. We at Insider Monkey have made an extensive database of more than 866 of those established hedge funds and famous value investors’ filings. In this article, we analyze how these elite funds and prominent investors traded IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) based on those filings.

Hedge fund interest in IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) shares was flat at the end of last quarter. This is usually a negative indicator. Our calculations also showed that IIN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). 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 Central Valley Community Bancorp (NASDAQ:CVCY), Timberland Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSBK), and Oxford Square Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:OXSQ) to gather more data points.

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.

Mario Gabelli of GAMCO Investors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $26 biotech stock for $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 go over the recent hedge fund action surrounding IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 3 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 5 hedge funds with a bullish position in IIN a year ago. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Chuck Royce’s Royce & Associates has the most valuable position in IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN), worth close to $27 million, comprising 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is GAMCO Investors, led by Mario Gabelli, holding a $12.7 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Royce & Associates allocated the biggest weight to IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN), around 0.18% of its 13F portfolio. GAMCO Investors is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.11 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IIN.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) but similarly valued. These stocks are Central Valley Community Bancorp (NASDAQ:CVCY), Timberland Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSBK), Oxford Square Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:OXSQ), MDC Partners Inc. (NASDAQ:MDCA), SC Health Corporation (NYSE:SCPE), Sanara MedTech Inc. (NASDAQ:SMTI), and Ring Energy Inc (NYSE:REI). This group of stocks’ market caps match IIN’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 7.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $23 million. That figure was $40 million in IIN’s case. SC Health Corporation (NYSE:SCPE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Central Valley Community Bancorp (NASDAQ:CVCY) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks IntriCon Corporation (NASDAQ:IIN) is even less popular than CVCY. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IIN is 10. 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. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards IIN. Our calculations showed that the top 10 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th but managed to beat the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately IIN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); IIN investors were disappointed as the stock returned -15.7% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/11) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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