Is IR Stock A Buy or Sell?

Hedge Funds and other institutional investors have just completed filing their 13Fs with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing their equity portfolios as of the end of September. At Insider Monkey, we follow nearly 900 active hedge funds and notable investors and by analyzing their 13F filings, we can determine the stocks that they are collectively bullish on. One of their picks is Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR), so let’s take a closer look at the sentiment that surrounds it in the current quarter.

Is IR stock a buy or sell? Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR) investors should be aware of an increase in enthusiasm from smart money recently. Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR) was in 34 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of December. The all time high for this statistic is 47. Our calculations also showed that IR isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Today there are tons of methods market participants use to grade publicly traded companies. Some of the less utilized methods are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite fund managers can outpace their index-focused peers by a healthy amount (see the details here).

Ian Wace of Marshall Wace

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

At fourth quarter’s end, a total of 34 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 31% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 47 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in IR a year ago. With hedgies’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, holds the biggest position in Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR). Citadel Investment Group has a $292.4 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Viking Global, led by Andreas Halvorsen, holding a $280 million position; 0.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish contain Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Goodnow Investment Group allocated the biggest weight to Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR), around 3.07% of its 13F portfolio. Greenhouse Funds is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 1.29 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IR.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Holocene Advisors, managed by Brandon Haley, established the most valuable position in Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR). Holocene Advisors had $83.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management also initiated a $55.4 million position during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, Renaissance Technologies, and Alexander Mitchell’s Scopus Asset Management.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR). We will take a look at Qorvo Inc (NASDAQ:QRVO), TransUnion (NYSE:TRU), CDW Corporation (NASDAQ:CDW), ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ZI), Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:WPM), Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE), and Pioneer Natural Resources Company (NYSE:PXD). All of these stocks’ market caps match IR’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 45.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $2019 million. That figure was $940 million in IR’s case. Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ZI) is the least popular one with only 31 bullish hedge fund positions. Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IR is 35. 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 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 7.9% in 2021 through April 1st and still beat the market by 0.4 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on IR as the stock returned 8.9% since the end of the fourth quarter (through 4/1) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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