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 Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.
Is ROP a good stock to buy? The best stock pickers were betting on the stock. The number of long hedge fund bets advanced by 2 in recent months. Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP) was in 42 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 50. Our calculations also showed that ROP isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). There were 40 hedge funds in our database with ROP positions at the end of the fourth quarter.
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Charles Akre of Akre Capital Management
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Do Hedge Funds Think ROP Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At first quarter’s end, a total of 42 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 5% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ROP over the last 23 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Charles Akre’s Akre Capital Management has the number one position in Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP), worth close to $700.4 million, amounting to 4.8% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, which holds a $185.5 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other professional money managers that are bullish include Greg Poole’s Echo Street Capital Management, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and Peter Simmie’s Bristol Gate Capital Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Lansing Management allocated the biggest weight to Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP), around 12.48% of its 13F portfolio. Akre Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 4.76 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ROP.
Consequently, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. Renaissance Technologies, assembled the most valuable position in Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP). Renaissance Technologies had $25.1 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management also made a $22.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ROP positions are Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, D. E. Shaw’s D E Shaw, and Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors.
Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP). These stocks are DoorDash, Inc. (NYSE:DASH), American Electric Power Company, Inc. (NYSE:AEP), National Grid plc (NYSE:NGG), Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROKU), IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDXX), Microchip Technology Incorporated (NASDAQ:MCHP), and Manulife Financial Corporation (NYSE:MFC). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to ROP’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| DASH | 38 | 4774544 | 0 |
| AEP | 32 | 809288 | 0 |
| NGG | 9 | 331590 | 4 |
| ROKU | 63 | 3781353 | 3 |
| IDXX | 49 | 2851712 | 3 |
| MCHP | 42 | 962773 | -3 |
| MFC | 17 | 190066 | -3 |
| Average | 35.7 | 1957332 | 0.6 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 35.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1957 million. That figure was $1497 million in ROP’s case. Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROKU) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand National Grid plc (NYSE:NGG) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Roper Technologies Inc. (NYSE:ROP) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for ROP is 62.8. 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 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and still beat the market by 6.1 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on ROP, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 11.6% since Q1 (through June 18th) and outperformed the market as well.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
