Many prominent investors, including Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Stan Druckenmiller, have been cautious regarding the current bull market and missed out as the stock market reached another high in recent weeks. On the other hand, technology hedge funds weren’t timid and registered double digit market beating gains. Financials, energy and industrial stocks initially suffered the most but many of these stocks delivered strong returns since November and hedge funds actually increased their positions in these stocks. In this article we will find out how hedge fund sentiment towards DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) changed recently.
DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) shares haven’t seen a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 35 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. Our calculations also showed that XRAY isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). At the end of this article we will also compare XRAY to other stocks including Korea Electric Power Corporation (NYSE:KEP), AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL), and Guardant Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:GH) to get a better sense of its popularity.
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 we’re going to review the fresh hedge fund action regarding DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY).
Do Hedge Funds Think XRAY Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?
At the end of September, a total of 35 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 0% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 25 hedge funds with a bullish position in XRAY a year ago. So, let’s examine which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.
The largest stake in DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) was held by Generation Investment Management, which reported holding $397.5 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Two Sigma Advisors with a $50.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Arrowstreet Capital, Select Equity Group, and Point72 Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Generation Investment Management allocated the biggest weight to DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY), around 1.65% of its 13F portfolio. Parkman Healthcare Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 1.18 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to XRAY.
Seeing as DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) has faced bearish sentiment from the smart money, we can see that there lies a certain “tier” of hedge funds who sold off their full holdings last quarter. Interestingly, Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group dumped the largest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, totaling about $45.9 million in stock. Robert Pohly’s fund, Samlyn Capital, also dropped its stock, about $22.5 million worth. These moves are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).
Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY). These stocks are Korea Electric Power Corporation (NYSE:KEP), AMERCO (NASDAQ:UHAL), Guardant Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:GH), Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM), Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB), LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA), and Jones Lang LaSalle Inc (NYSE:JLL). This group of stocks’ market caps are similar to XRAY’s market cap.
| Ticker | No of HFs with positions | Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) | Change in HF Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| KEP | 3 | 22067 | -1 |
| UHAL | 25 | 900713 | 4 |
| GH | 31 | 1515303 | -18 |
| AEM | 33 | 415664 | 4 |
| CPB | 29 | 443269 | 2 |
| LPLA | 37 | 1690118 | -11 |
| JLL | 30 | 2108449 | -1 |
| Average | 26.9 | 1013655 | -3 |
View table here if you experience formatting issues.
As you can see these stocks had an average of 26.9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1014 million. That figure was $746 million in XRAY’s case. LPL Financial Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LPLA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Korea Electric Power Corporation (NYSE:KEP) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for XRAY is 82.1. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately XRAY wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on XRAY were disappointed as the stock returned -16% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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.
Follow Dentsply Sirona Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY)
Follow Dentsply Sirona Inc. (NASDAQ:XRAY)
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
