Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (VSH): Hedge Funds Taking Some Chips Off The Table

Although the masses and most of the financial media blame hedge funds for their exorbitant fee structure and disappointing performance, these investors have proved to have great stock picking abilities over the years (that’s why their assets under management continue to swell). We believe hedge fund sentiment should serve as a crucial tool of an individual investor’s stock selection process, as it may offer great insights of how the brightest minds of the finance industry feel about specific stocks. After all, these people have access to the smartest analysts and expensive data/information sources that individual investors can’t match. So should one consider investing in Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH)? The smart money sentiment can provide an answer to this question.

Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 32. Our calculations also showed that VSH isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

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. With all of this in mind let’s review the new hedge fund action encompassing Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH).

Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -3% from the second quarter of 2021. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in VSH over the last 25 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Fisher Asset Management was the largest shareholder of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH), with a stake worth $76.6 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Fisher Asset Management was Royce & Associates, which amassed a stake valued at $72.9 million. Millennium Management, Woodline Partners, and AQR Capital Management 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 Mountaineer Partners Management allocated the biggest weight to Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH), around 8.52% of its 13F portfolio. Divisar Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.47 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to VSH.

Since Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH) has witnessed declining sentiment from hedge fund managers, logic holds that there exists a select few funds that slashed their entire stakes in the third quarter. Interestingly, Howard Marks’s Oaktree Capital Management dropped the biggest investment of all the hedgies tracked by Insider Monkey, comprising an estimated $5 million in stock, and Donald Sussman’s Paloma Partners was right behind this move, as the fund sold off about $0.7 million worth. These transactions are intriguing to say the least, as aggregate hedge fund interest dropped by 1 funds in the third quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH). These stocks are Atea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVIR), FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORM), First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG), Payoneer Global Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYO), Paymentus Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PAY), Momentive Global Inc (NASDAQ:MNTV), and Nova Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVMI). All of these stocks’ market caps resemble VSH’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $223 million. That figure was $437 million in VSH’s case. Payoneer Global Inc. (NASDAQ:PAYO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand First Majestic Silver Corp (NYSE:AG) is the least popular one with only 9 bullish hedge fund positions. Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for VSH is 80.3. 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 positive signal but 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately VSH wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on VSH were disappointed as the stock returned 4.5% since the end of September (through 12/9) 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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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