Is OPRA Stock A Buy Here?

The 800+ hedge funds and famous money managers tracked by Insider Monkey have already compiled and submitted their 13F filings for the first quarter, which unveil their equity positions as of March 31st. We went through these filings, fixed typos and other more significant errors and identified the changes in hedge fund portfolios. Our extensive review of these public filings is finally over, so this article is set to reveal the smart money sentiment towards Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA).

Is OPRA stock a buy? Money managers were taking a bullish view. The number of long hedge fund positions moved up by 2 lately. Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA) was in 5 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 15. Our calculations also showed that OPRA isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? 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 more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We have been able to outperform the passive index funds by tracking the moves of corporate insiders and hedge funds, and we believe small investors can benefit a lot from reading hedge fund investor letters and 13F filings.

David Siegel of Two Sigma Advisors

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $23 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $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. Now let’s check out the recent hedge fund action surrounding Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 5 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 67% from the fourth quarter of 2020. On the other hand, there were a total of 6 hedge funds with a bullish position in OPRA a year ago. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

More specifically, Greenhouse Funds was the largest shareholder of Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA), with a stake worth $4.1 million reported as of the end of March. Trailing Greenhouse Funds was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $2.3 million. Millennium Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and Citadel Investment Group 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 Greenhouse Funds allocated the biggest weight to Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA), around 0.44% of its 13F portfolio. Renaissance Technologies is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.0029 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to OPRA.

Now, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Greenhouse Funds, managed by Joe Milano, initiated the most outsized position in Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA). Greenhouse Funds had $4.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new OPRA investors: Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA). We will take a look at Apollo Medical Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMEH), WideOpenWest, Inc. (NYSE:WOW), IMAX Corporation (NYSE:IMAX), Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ:KFRC), Standex International Corp. (NYSE:SXI), XL Fleet Corp. (NYSE:XL), and Costamare Inc (NYSE:CMRE). This group of stocks’ market values resemble OPRA’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 12.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $80 million. That figure was $8 million in OPRA’s case. IMAX Corporation (NYSE:IMAX) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Apollo Medical Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMEH) is the least popular one with only 7 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Opera Limited (NASDAQ:OPRA) is even less popular than AMEH. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for OPRA is 17. 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 OPRA. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th but managed to beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately OPRA wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); OPRA investors were disappointed as the stock returned 0.2% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/18) 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.