Is VBIV A Good Stock To Buy Now?

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 817 world-class investment firms that we track and now have access to the collective wisdom contained in these filings, which are based on their September 30 holdings, data that is available nowhere else. Should you consider VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV) for your portfolio? We’ll look to this invaluable collective wisdom for the answer.

Is VBIV a good stock to buy now? Hedge funds were turning bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund bets went up by 1 recently. VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV) was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 10. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that VBIV isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video for a quick look at the top 5 stocks). There were 10 hedge funds in our database with VBIV holdings at the end of June.

Video: Watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

In today’s marketplace there are several formulas investors have at their disposal to appraise their holdings. A pair of the most useful formulas are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite investment managers can outpace the broader indices by a very impressive amount (see the details here).

At Insider Monkey we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best blue chip stocks to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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 website. Keeping this in mind we’re going to go over the key hedge fund action regarding VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV).

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

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 10% from the second quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VBIV over the last 21 quarters. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Perceptive Advisors was the largest shareholder of VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV), with a stake worth $157.4 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Perceptive Advisors was Viking Global, which amassed a stake valued at $25.2 million. Millennium Management, Two Sigma Advisors, and Bailard Inc 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 Perceptive Advisors allocated the biggest weight to VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV), around 2.3% of its 13F portfolio. Viking Global is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.09 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VBIV.

Consequently, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Viking Global, managed by Andreas Halvorsen, established the most valuable position in VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV). Viking Global had $25.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Thomas Bailard’s Bailard Inc also made a $0.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners, Andre F. Perold’s HighVista Strategies, and Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV) but similarly valued. These stocks are SMART Global Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGH), Heritage Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:HFWA), Westlake Chemical Partners LP (NYSE:WLKP), Third Point Reinsurance Ltd (NYSE:TPRE), Maverix Metals Inc. (NYSE:MMX), Bain Capital Specialty Finance, Inc. (NYSE:BCSF), and LeMaitre Vascular Inc (NASDAQ:LMAT). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to VBIV’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $64 million. That figure was $191 million in VBIV’s case. Third Point Reinsurance Ltd (NYSE:TPRE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Westlake Chemical Partners LP (NYSE:WLKP) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. VBI Vaccines, Inc. (NASDAQ:VBIV) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VBIV is 62.5. 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 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 41.3% in 2019 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 10 percentage points. These stocks gained 32.9% in 2020 through December 8th and still beat the market by 16.2 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on VBIV as the stock returned 14.3% since the end of Q3 (through 12/8) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.

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