Is JAMF A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Is Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF) a good place to invest some of your money right now? We can gain invaluable insight to help us answer that question by studying the investment trends of top investors, who employ world-class Ivy League graduates, who are given immense resources and industry contacts to put their financial expertise to work. The top picks of these firms have historically outperformed the market when we account for known risk factors, making them very valuable investment ideas.

Is JAMF a good stock to buy now? Prominent investors were turning bullish. The number of long hedge fund bets rose by 15 recently. Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF) was in 15 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. Our calculations also showed that JAMF 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).

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

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. Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by 66 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that underperformed the market by 10 percentage points annually between 2006 and 2017. Interestingly the margin of underperformance of these stocks has been increasing in recent years. Investors who are long the market and short these stocks would have returned more than 27% annually between 2015 and 2017. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 in our quarterly newsletter.

Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to take a look at the fresh hedge fund action surrounding Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF).

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

At Q3’s end, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 15 from one quarter earlier. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in JAMF over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Tiger Global Management LLC held the most valuable stake in Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF), which was worth $104.5 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Viking Global which amassed $22.8 million worth of shares. OZ Management, Alyeska Investment Group, and Matrix Capital Management were 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 Tiger Global Management LLC allocated the biggest weight to Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF), around 0.29% of its 13F portfolio. Alyeska Investment Group is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.13 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to JAMF.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Tiger Global Management LLC, managed by Chase Coleman, assembled the most valuable position in Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF). Tiger Global Management LLC had $104.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global also initiated a $22.8 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new JAMF investors: Daniel S. Och’s OZ Management, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group, and David Goel and Paul Ferri’s Matrix Capital Management.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF) but similarly valued. These stocks are People’s United Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBCT), Eaton Vance Corp (NYSE:EV), Kemper Corporation (NYSE:KMPR), Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIR), Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (NYSE:PAA), Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG), and Advanced Drainage Systems Inc. (NYSE:WMS). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to JAMF’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $301 million. That figure was $175 million in JAMF’s case. Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIR) is the least popular one with only 6 bullish hedge fund positions. Jamf Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:JAMF) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for JAMF is 40. 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 December 14th and surpassed the market again by 15.8 percentage points. Unfortunately JAMF wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); JAMF investors were disappointed as the stock returned -14.4% since the end of September (through 12/14) 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.

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