Is Village Farms International (VFF) A Good Stock To Buy Now?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 817 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the SEC The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30th. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF) based on that data.

Is Village Farms International (VFF) a good stock to buy now? VFF has experienced an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF) was in 7 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistics is 5. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 2 hedge funds in our database with VFF holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that VFF 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).

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

To the average investor there are numerous formulas shareholders have at their disposal to assess publicly traded companies. A couple of the most useful formulas are hedge fund and insider trading activity. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the elite investment managers can beat their index-focused peers by a very impressive amount (see the details here).

Michael Gelband of ExodusPoint Capital

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 check out the recent hedge fund action encompassing Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF).

What does smart money think about Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF)?

At the end of September, a total of 7 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 250% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards VFF over the last 21 quarters. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Among these funds, Corriente Advisors held the most valuable stake in Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF), which was worth $4.3 million at the end of the third quarter. On the second spot was Millennium Management which amassed $1.1 million worth of shares. Marshall Wace LLP, 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 Corriente Advisors allocated the biggest weight to Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF), around 2.19% of its 13F portfolio. Marshall Wace LLP is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.01 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VFF.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Corriente Advisors, managed by Mark Hart III, established the largest position in Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF). Corriente Advisors had $4.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP also made a $0.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new VFF positions are John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, and Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint Capital.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF). These stocks are NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN), CooTek (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE:CTK), Covenant Logistics Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVLG), Vitru Limited (NASDAQ:VTRU), Metalla Royalty & Streaming Ltd. (NYSE:MTA), Global Indemnity Group LLC (NASDAQ:GBLI), and Titan Machinery Inc. (NASDAQ:TITN). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to VFF’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $17 million. That figure was $7 million in VFF’s case. NeoPhotonics Corp (NYSE:NPTN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand CooTek (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE:CTK) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Village Farms International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VFF) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VFF is 58.8. 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 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 31.6% in 2020 through December 2nd and still beat the market by 16 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on VFF as the stock returned 124.9% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/2) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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