STERIS Corp (STE): Insiders Aren’t Crazy About It

Is STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE) going to take off soon? The best stock pickers are buying. The number of bullish hedge fund bets increased by 1 lately.

At the moment, there are tons of indicators market participants can use to watch Mr. Market. Some of the most innovative are hedge fund and insider trading activity. At Insider Monkey, our research analyses have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the elite investment managers can outperform the broader indices by a healthy amount (see just how much).

Equally as key, optimistic insider trading sentiment is a second way to parse down the stock market universe. Just as you’d expect, there are many stimuli for an executive to downsize shares of his or her company, but only one, very simple reason why they would buy. Several academic studies have demonstrated the useful potential of this strategy if you understand where to look (learn more here).

Consequently, we’re going to take a look at the latest action surrounding STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE).

What have hedge funds been doing with STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE)?

At Q1’s end, a total of 18 of the hedge funds we track were bullish in this stock, a change of 6% from the previous quarter. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were boosting their holdings meaningfully.

Of the funds we track, Fisher Asset Management, managed by Ken Fisher, holds the biggest position in STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE). Fisher Asset Management has a $70.2 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, which held a $51.6 million position; 0.2% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other peers that hold long positions include Richard Breeden’s Breeden Capital Management, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

As industrywide interest jumped, some big names have jumped into STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE) headfirst. Polar Capital, managed by Brian Ashford-Russell and Tim Woolley, initiated the most outsized position in STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE). Polar Capital had 8.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Israel Englander’s Catapult Capital Management also made a $1.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Mike Vranos’s Ellington, and David Costen Haley’s HBK Investments.

How are insiders trading STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE)?

Insider purchases made by high-level executives is best served when the primary stock in question has experienced transactions within the past 180 days. Over the last six-month time period, STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE) has seen zero unique insiders purchasing, and 12 insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

Let’s also examine hedge fund and insider activity in other stocks similar to STERIS Corp (NYSE:STE). These stocks are Sirona Dental Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRO), Mine Safety Appliances (NYSE:MSA), Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALGN), Techne Corporation (NASDAQ:TECH), and Opko Health Inc. (NYSE:OPK). All of these stocks are in the medical appliances & equipment industry and their market caps are similar to STE’s market cap.