Should You Buy DENTSPLY International Inc. (XRAY)?

The worries about the economic slowdown in China and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases triggered several waves of equity sell-offs during the third quarter. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers had to stomach substantial losses during the bloody three-month period, which might have caused some to consider fleeing the U.S. equity markets. Interestingly, smaller-cap stocks registered higher losses than large-capitalization stocks during the September quarter, suggesting that institutional investors heavily discarded seemingly riskier equities amid high uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index lost 11.9% in the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark declined a mere 6.4%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards DENTSPLY International Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY).

DENTSPLY International Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) was in 29 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. XRAY shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest in recent months. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with XRAY holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as The WhiteWave Foods Co (NYSE:WWAV), Torchmark Corporation (NYSE:TMK), and CDW Corp (NASDAQ:CDW) to gather more data points.

In the 21st-century investor’s toolkit, there are many gauges shareholders use to grade stocks. A duo of the less known gauges are hedge fund and insider trading interest. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top hedge fund managers can trounce the market by a solid amount (see the details here).

With all of this in mind, let’s go over the key action encompassing DENTSPLY International Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY).

What does the smart money think about DENTSPLY International Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 29 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 38% from the second quarter. With the smart money’s sentiment swirling, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

When looking at the institutional investors followed by Insider Monkey, Robert Joseph Caruso’s Select Equity Group has the number one position in DENTSPLY International Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY), worth close to $541.3 million, amounting to 5.2% of its total 13F portfolio. The second largest stake is held by Anand Parekh of Alyeska Investment Group, with a $73.5 million position; 0.9% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Other professional money managers that hold long positions consist of Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group, David Harding’s Winton Capital Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.