Do Hedge Funds Love Intevac, Inc. (IVAC)?

We view hedge fund activity in the stock unfavorable, but in this case there was only a single hedge fund selling its entire position: First Eagle Investment Management. One hedge fund selling its entire position doesn’t always imply a bearish intent. Theoretically a hedge fund may decide to sell a promising position in order to invest the proceeds in a more promising idea. However, we don’t think this is the case in this case because only one of the 800+ hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey identified as a viable investment and initiated a position in the stock (that fund was Millennium Management).

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Luby’s, Inc. (NYSE:LUB), Civeo Corporation (Canada) (NYSE:CVEO), Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:DRNA), and Assembly Biosciences Inc (NASDAQ:ASMB). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble IVAC’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 9 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $29 million. That figure was $20 million in IVAC’s case. Civeo Corporation (Canada) (NYSE:CVEO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Luby’s, Inc. (NYSE:LUB) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Intevac, Inc. (NASDAQ:IVAC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard CVEO might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.