After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of March 31st. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX).
Is NWPX a good stock to buy? Prominent investors were cutting their exposure. The number of bullish hedge fund positions went down by 4 recently. Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 13. Our calculations also showed that NWPX isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).
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Do Hedge Funds Think NWPX Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -40% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 13 hedge funds with a bullish position in NWPX a year ago. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).
Among these funds, Royce & Associates held the most valuable stake in Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX), which was worth $35.9 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was D E Shaw which amassed $1.9 million worth of shares. Fairfax Financial Holdings, AQR Capital Management, and BCK Capital 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 BCK Capital allocated the biggest weight to Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX), around 0.53% of its 13F portfolio. Royce & Associates is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.24 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NWPX.
Because Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there exists a select few funds that elected to cut their positions entirely heading into Q2. Interestingly, Mark Broach’s Manatuck Hill Partners said goodbye to the largest stake of all the hedgies followed by Insider Monkey, comprising about $1.8 million in stock. Ken Griffin’s fund, Citadel Investment Group, also dumped its stock, about $0.4 million worth. These transactions are interesting, as total hedge fund interest dropped by 4 funds heading into Q2.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX). These stocks are BlueCity Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:BLCT), Talis Biomedical Corporation (NASDAQ:TLIS), SmartFinancial, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMBK), Waitr Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:WTRH), Cogent Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:COGT), Protective Insurance Corporation (NASDAQ:PTVCA), and Olympic Steel, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZEUS). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble NWPX’s market valuation.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| BLCT | 2 | 598 | 0 |
| TLIS | 8 | 112309 | 8 |
| SMBK | 9 | 24221 | 3 |
| WTRH | 13 | 53924 | -4 |
| COGT | 27 | 170227 | -1 |
| PTVCA | 2 | 5545 | 1 |
| ZEUS | 9 | 17697 | 1 |
| Average | 10 | 54932 | 1.1 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
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 $55 million. That figure was $42 million in NWPX’s case. Cogent Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:COGT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand BlueCity Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:BLCT) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Northwest Pipe Company (NASDAQ:NWPX) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for NWPX is 22.8. 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. 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 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and surpassed the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately NWPX wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); NWPX investors were disappointed as the stock returned -14.7% since the end of March (through 6/25) 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 in 2021.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
