Hedge Funds Bought Navistar And These Other Stocks

Royce & Associates now owns 8.3 million shares of Molex Incorporated (NASDAQ:MOLX), which according to the filing with the SEC is a little over 10% of the outstanding shares. This fund, managed by Chuck Royce, tends to take concentrated positions in small-cap and mid-cap stocks (check out Royce’s stock picks); Molex has a market cap of about $5 billion. We don’t think that the stock is a good value, as its trailing P/E is 19 and its operating and net income were both down in its last fiscal quarter versus a year earlier. Some of its peers might make better buys.

Royce also reported that it had increased its stake in Brady Corp (NYSE:BRC), which is best known for its identification and security solutions services business, to 3.8 million shares. Revenue and earnings have been down slightly at Brady if we strip out the effect of a small loss on the sale of businesses. The P/E multiples are in the teens, while some of the company’s peers that we looked at were trading at a discount even though they boast larger market caps and their businesses have actually been growing. Read our analysis of Brady compared to its peers.