Is Materion Corp (MTRN) A Good Stock To Buy?

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. We have processed the filings of the more than 866 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their March 31st holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Is MTRN a good stock to buy? Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund sentiment in recent months. Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) was in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 19. Our calculations also showed that MTRN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

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Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners

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

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 42% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 18 hedge funds with a bullish position in MTRN a year ago. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $27.9 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GAMCO Investors with a $20.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Millennium Management, ACK Asset Management, and Fisher Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position ACK Asset Management allocated the biggest weight to Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN), around 5.57% of its 13F portfolio. Portolan Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.49 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to MTRN.

As one would reasonably expect, specific money managers have jumped into Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) headfirst. Portolan Capital Management, managed by George McCabe, initiated the most valuable position in Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN). Portolan Capital Management had $6.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital also made a $0.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Score Media and Gaming Inc. (NASDAQ:SCR), COMPASS Pathways Plc (NASDAQ:CMPS), BJ’s Restaurants, Inc. (NASDAQ:BJRI), ePlus Inc. (NASDAQ:PLUS), GreenTree Hospitality Group Ltd. (NYSE:GHG), U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc. (NYSE:USPH), and Mission Produce, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVO). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to MTRN’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 10 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $46 million. That figure was $109 million in MTRN’s case. U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc. (NYSE:USPH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Mission Produce, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVO) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Materion Corp (NYSE:MTRN) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for MTRN is 86.8. 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. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 28.5% in 2021 through July 23rd and still beat the market by 10.1 percentage points. Unfortunately MTRN wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on MTRN were disappointed as the stock returned 3.8% since the end of the first quarter (through 7/23) 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.

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