Is Peoples Utah Bancorp (PUB) A Good Stock To Buy?

We at Insider Monkey have gone over 700 13F filings that hedge funds and prominent investors are required to file by the government. The 13F filings show the funds’ and investors’ portfolio positions as of September 30. In this article, we look at what those funds think of Peoples Utah Bancorp (NASDAQ:PUB) based on that data.

Peoples Utah Bancorp shareholders have witnessed a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds recently. PUB was in 6 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with PUB holdings at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare PUB to other stocks, including Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE:PBT), NextPoint Residential Trust Inc (NYSE:NXRT), and Legacy Reserves LP (NASDAQ:LGCY) to get a better sense of its popularity.

To most investors, hedge funds are perceived as underperforming, old investment vehicles of the past. While there are greater than 8000 funds trading at the moment, Our researchers choose to focus on the upper echelon of this group, around 700 funds. Most estimates calculate that this group of people command most of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by observing their unrivaled picks, Insider Monkey has deciphered several investment strategies that have historically defeated Mr. Market. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy defeated the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points annually for a decade in their back tests.

With all of this in mind, let’s take a peek at the recent action surrounding Peoples Utah Bancorp (NASDAQ:PUB).

How have hedgies been trading Peoples Utah Bancorp (NASDAQ:PUB)?

At the Q3’s end, a total of 6 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -33% from the second quarter. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of key hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

According to Insider Monkey’s hedge fund database, Basswood Capital, managed by Matthew Lindenbaum, holds the number one position in Peoples Utah Bancorp (NASDAQ:PUB). Basswood Capital has a $4.1 million position in the stock, comprising 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Sitting at the No. 2 spot is Mark Lee’s Forest Hill Capital, with a $3.6 million position; the fund has 0.3% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism contain Sharif Siddiqui’s Alpenglow Capital, Amy Minella’s Cardinal Capital and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management.