Where Do Hedge Funds Stand On Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (PFBI)?

In this article we are going to use hedge fund sentiment as a tool and determine whether Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI) is a good investment right now. We like to analyze hedge fund sentiment before conducting days of in-depth research. We do so because hedge funds and other elite investors have numerous Ivy League graduates, expert network advisers, and supply chain tipsters working or consulting for them. There is not a shortage of news stories covering failed hedge fund investments and it is a fact that hedge funds’ picks don’t beat the market 100% of the time, but their consensus picks have historically done very well and have outperformed the market after adjusting for risk.

Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI) has experienced an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI) was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the first quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 6. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 3 hedge funds in our database with PFBI positions at the end of the fourth quarter. Our calculations also showed that PFBI isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

In the eyes of most stock holders, hedge funds are assumed to be underperforming, old financial vehicles of yesteryear. While there are greater than 8000 funds with their doors open at the moment, Our experts look at the leaders of this club, about 850 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people orchestrate the majority of all hedge funds’ total capital, and by keeping an eye on their inimitable stock picks, Insider Monkey has figured out many investment strategies that have historically defeated the broader indices. Insider Monkey’s flagship short hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 short ETFs by around 20 percentage points a year since its inception in March 2017. Also, our monthly newsletter’s portfolio of long stock picks returned 206.8% since March 2017 (through May 2021) and beat the S&P 500 Index by more than 115 percentage points. You can download a sample issue of this newsletter on our website .

Jeffrey Gendell of Tontine Asset Management

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. Now let’s take a look at the latest hedge fund action encompassing Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI).

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

At the end of March, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 100% from the fourth quarter of 2020. By comparison, 3 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in PFBI 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.

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Renaissance Technologies, holds the most valuable position in Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI). Renaissance Technologies has a $2.7 million position in the stock, comprising less than 0.1%% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Tontine Asset Management, managed by Jeffrey Gendell, which holds a $1.8 million position; the fund has 0.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining hedge funds and institutional investors that are bullish include Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp and Roger Ibbotson’s Zebra Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Zebra Capital Management allocated the biggest weight to Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI), around 0.26% of its 13F portfolio. Tontine Asset Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.19 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to PFBI.

As aggregate interest increased, specific money managers have been driving this bullishness. Millennium Management, managed by Israel Englander, initiated the most valuable position in Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI). Millennium Management had $0.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also made a $0.3 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a new position in the stock is Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI). We will take a look at Co-Diagnostics, Inc. (NASDAQ:CODX), Blue Ridge Bankshares, Inc. (NYSE:BRBS), Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AQMS), Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ORMP), The Cato Corporation (NYSE:CATO), Platinum Group Metals Limited (NYSE:PLG), and Value Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:VALU). This group of stocks’ market values are closest to PFBI’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 5.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $10 million. That figure was $6 million in PFBI’s case. The Cato Corporation (NYSE:CATO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Value Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:VALU) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. Premier Financial Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:PFBI) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for PFBI is 54.7. 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 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and beat the market again by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately PFBI wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on PFBI were disappointed as the stock returned -8.2% since the end of March (through 6/25) 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.