After several tireless days we have finished crunching the numbers from nearly 900 13F filings issued by the elite hedge funds and other investment firms that we track at Insider Monkey, which disclosed those firms’ equity portfolios as of September 30th. The results of that effort will be put on display in this article, as we share valuable insight into the smart money sentiment towards Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT).
Is Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT) a bargain? The best stock pickers were taking an optimistic view. The number of long hedge fund positions moved up by 3 lately. Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT) was in 21 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 23. Our calculations also showed that PRFT isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings). There were 18 hedge funds in our database with PRFT positions at the end of the second quarter.
David E. Shaw of D.E. Shaw
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 check out the recent hedge fund action regarding Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT).
Do Hedge Funds Think PRFT Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At Q3’s end, a total of 21 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 17% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in PRFT over the last 25 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.
Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, holds the most valuable position in Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT). Arrowstreet Capital has a $62.6 million position in the stock, comprising 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Blue Grotto Capital, managed by Ben Gordon, which holds a $36.5 million position; the fund has 9.7% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money that hold long positions encompass Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Noam Gottesman’s GLG Partners. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Blue Grotto Capital allocated the biggest weight to Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT), around 9.68% of its 13F portfolio. McKinley Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.96 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PRFT.
As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers were breaking ground themselves. D E Shaw, managed by D. E. Shaw, established the most outsized call position in Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT). D E Shaw had $1.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Algert’s Algert Global also made a $0.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Karim Abbadi and Edward McBride’s Centiva Capital, Mika Toikka’s AlphaCrest Capital Management, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management.
Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT). These stocks are ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX), Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. (NYSE:ABG), First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB), Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC), Focus Financial Partners Inc. (NASDAQ:FOCS), PennyMac Financial Services Inc (NYSE:PFSI), and Eastern Bankshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBC). This group of stocks’ market values match PRFT’s market value.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| IBRX | 5 | 9484 | -2 |
| ABG | 22 | 995594 | -4 |
| FHB | 14 | 165509 | 4 |
| TKC | 9 | 22874 | 2 |
| FOCS | 16 | 101085 | -3 |
| PFSI | 33 | 740702 | 7 |
| EBC | 19 | 126087 | -1 |
| Average | 16.9 | 308762 | 0.4 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $309 million. That figure was $185 million in PRFT’s case. PennyMac Financial Services Inc (NYSE:PFSI) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand ImmunityBio, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBRX) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRFT) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PRFT is 64. 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 29.6% in 2021 and still beat the market by 3.6 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on PRFT as the stock returned 11.7% since the end of Q3 (through 12/31) and outperformed the market. Hedge funds were rewarded for their relative bullishness.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
