Is Viatris Inc. (VTRS) A Good Stock To Buy?

Last year we predicted the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we told in advance that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS).

Is VTRS a good stock to buy now? The best stock pickers were buying. The number of long hedge fund bets went up by 2 lately. Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS) was in 55 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 74. Our calculations also showed that VTRS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. Now we’re going to take a look at the new hedge fund action encompassing Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS).

James E. Flynn of Deerfield Management

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

At the end of September, a total of 55 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 4% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 48 hedge funds with a bullish position in VTRS 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.

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Benjamin A. Smith’s Laurion Capital Management has the number one position in Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS), worth close to $457.2 million, amounting to 1.9% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Deerfield Management, led by James E. Flynn, holding a $255.1 million position; 5% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other members of the smart money that hold long positions comprise Stephen DuBois’s Camber Capital Management, David Greenspan’s Slate Path Capital and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Slate Path Capital allocated the biggest weight to Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS), around 7.32% of its 13F portfolio. Camber Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 5.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VTRS.

As aggregate interest increased, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. TwinBeech Capital, managed by Jinghua Yan, established the most valuable position in Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS). TwinBeech Capital had $7.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. John Murphy’s Levin Easterly Partners also made a $7.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new VTRS investors: Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital, and Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS). We will take a look at Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (NYSE:WAB), Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG), Coupa Software Incorporated (NASDAQ:COUP), GoodRx Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GDRX), 10x Genomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TXG), MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX), and DLocal Limited (NASDAQ:DLO). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to VTRS’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 30.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1627 million. That figure was $1466 million in VTRS’s case. Coupa Software Incorporated (NASDAQ:COUP) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand DLocal Limited (NASDAQ:DLO) is the least popular one with only 19 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Viatris Inc. (NASDAQ:VTRS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VTRS is 79.3. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and still beat the market by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately VTRS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VTRS were disappointed as the stock returned -8.4% since the end of the third quarter (through 11/30) 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.

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