Is Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (PBFS) A Good Stock To Buy?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the first quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 4.5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS) based on that data.

Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS) has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest in recent months. Our calculations also showed that PBFS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 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.

At the moment there are a multitude of tools shareholders can use to appraise publicly traded companies. Two of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best fund managers can beat the market by a healthy amount (see the details here).

David E. Shaw of D.E. Shaw

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, legendary investor Bill Miller told investors to sell 7 extremely popular recession stocks last month. So, we went through his list and recommended another stock with 100% upside potential instead. We interview hedge fund managers and ask them about their best ideas. If you want to find out the best healthcare stock to buy right now, you can watch our latest hedge fund manager interview here. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. Our best call in 2020 was shorting the market when S&P 500 was trading at 3150 after realizing the coronavirus pandemic’s significance before most investors. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the latest hedge fund action regarding Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS).

Hedge fund activity in Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS)

At the end of the first quarter, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 33% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in PBFS over the last 18 quarters. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Lawrence Seidman’s Seidman Investment Partnership has the biggest position in Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS), worth close to $2.5 million, comprising 3.1% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, which holds a $0.1 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers that hold long positions comprise Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Renaissance Technologies and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Seidman Investment Partnership allocated the biggest weight to Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS), around 3.11% of its 13F portfolio. D E Shaw is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.0002 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PBFS.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, assembled the biggest position in Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS). Citadel Investment Group had $0.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Renaissance Technologies also initiated a $0.1 million position during the quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS). These stocks are Red River Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:RRBI), AdvanSix Inc. (NYSE:ASIX), Evofem Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVFM), and Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:SPWH). This group of stocks’ market caps are closest to PBFS’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 11.25 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $28 million. That figure was $3 million in PBFS’s case. Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:SPWH) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Red River Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:RRBI) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Pioneer Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBFS) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. 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 10 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.4% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10.1 percentage points. These stocks gained 8.3% in 2020 through the end of May and surpassed the market by 13.2 percentage points. Unfortunately PBFS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 10 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); PBFS investors were disappointed as the stock returned -8% during the second quarter and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 10 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.