Riverview Financial Corporation (RIVE): Are Hedge Funds Right About This Stock?

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 Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE) in this article.

Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 7. RIVE investors should pay attention to an increase in enthusiasm from smart money lately. There were 5 hedge funds in our database with RIVE holdings at the end of December. Our calculations also showed that RIVE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the financial world there are a large number of tools investors have at their disposal to grade stocks. A pair of the most under-the-radar tools are hedge fund and insider trading indicators. We have shown that, historically, those who follow the top picks of the best fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a solid amount. Insider Monkey’s monthly stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 and outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points (see the details here). That’s why we believe hedge fund sentiment is a useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Emanuel Friedman of EJF Capital

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, an activist hedge fund owns nearly 40% of this $24 biotech stock and is trying to buy the rest for around $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. Keeping this in mind we’re going to analyze the new hedge fund action encompassing Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE).

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

At first quarter’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 20% from the fourth quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards RIVE over the last 23 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Among these funds, EJF Capital held the most valuable stake in Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE), which was worth $4.2 million at the end of the fourth quarter. On the second spot was Tontine Asset Management which amassed $2.6 million worth of shares. Millennium Management, Minerva Advisors, and Fourthstone LLC 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 EJF Capital allocated the biggest weight to Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE), around 0.31% of its 13F portfolio. Tontine Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.28 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to RIVE.

Consequently, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Fourthstone LLC, managed by Phil Stone, created the largest position in Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE). Fourthstone LLC had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE) but similarly valued. We will take a look at F-star Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSTX), Reed’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:REED), TransAct Technologies Incorporated (NASDAQ:TACT), American River Bankshares (NASDAQ:AMRB), Corenergy Infrastructure Trust Inc (NYSE:CORR), Lumos Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:LUMO), and OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN). This group of stocks’ market values are similar to RIVE’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 4.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $7 million. That figure was $8 million in RIVE’s case. TransAct Technologies Incorporated (NASDAQ:TACT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand American River Bankshares (NASDAQ:AMRB) is the least popular one with only 1 bullish hedge fund positions. Riverview Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:RIVE) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for RIVE is 73.4. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and still beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on RIVE, though not to the same extent, as the stock returned 12.5% since Q1 (through June 25th) and outperformed the market as well.

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