Is XTNT Stock A Buy Here?

Our extensive research has shown that imitating the smart money can generate significant returns for retail investors, which is why we track nearly 900 active prominent money managers and analyze their quarterly 13F filings. The stocks that are heavily bought by hedge funds historically outperformed the market, though there is no shortage of high profile failures like hedge funds’ 2018 losses in Facebook and Apple. Let’s take a closer look at what the funds we track think about Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT) in this article.

Is XTNT stock a buy? Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the second quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 4 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. Our calculations also showed that XTNT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare XTNT to other stocks including Xinyuan Real Estate Co., Ltd. (NYSE:XIN), Evans Bancorp Inc. (NYSE:EVBN), and Select Interior Concepts, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIC) to get a better sense of its popularity.

To the average investor there are a multitude of gauges market participants put to use to size up publicly traded companies. Two of the most under-the-radar gauges are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite fund managers can outclass their index-focused peers by a solid amount (see the details here). Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund wants to buy this $27 biotech stock for $50. So, we recommended a long position to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 10 best battery 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. 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 homepage. With all of this in mind we’re going to take a glance at the fresh hedge fund action encompassing Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT).

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

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 4 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 3 hedge funds with a bullish position in XTNT a year ago. So, let’s find 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, OrbiMed Advisors has the most valuable position in Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT), worth close to $172 million, accounting for 1.6% of its total 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Renaissance Technologies, with a $2.2 million position; the fund has less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other members of the smart money that are bullish encompass Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management and . In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position 0 allocated the biggest weight to Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT), around 1.61% of its 13F portfolio. 0 is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.0027 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to XTNT.

Earlier we told you that the aggregate hedge fund interest in the stock was unchanged and we view this as a negative development. Even though there weren’t any hedge funds dumping their holdings during the third quarter, there weren’t any hedge funds initiating brand new positions. This indicates that hedge funds, at the very best, perceive this stock as dead money and they haven’t identified any viable catalysts that can attract investor attention.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT). We will take a look at Xinyuan Real Estate Co., Ltd. (NYSE:XIN), Evans Bancorp Inc. (NYSE:EVBN), Select Interior Concepts, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIC), Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE:GROY), Gold Standard Ventures Corp (NYSE:GSV), RigNet Inc (NASDAQ:RNET), and Velocity Financial, Inc. (NYSE:VEL). This group of stocks’ market valuations match XTNT’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $17 million. That figure was $174 million in XTNT’s case. Select Interior Concepts, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIC) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE:GROY) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Xtant Medical Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:XTNT) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for XTNT is 45. 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. 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 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 17.2% in 2021 through June 11th and surpassed the market again by 3.3 percentage points. Unfortunately XTNT wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was quite bearish); XTNT investors were disappointed as the stock returned -24.6% since the end of March (through 6/11) 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 in 2021.

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