Qiagen NV (QGEN) Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and famous investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds and investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find write-ups about an individual hedge fund’s trades on several financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves and analyze what the smart money thinks of Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN) based on that data.

Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN) was in 24 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. QGEN shareholders have witnessed an increase in hedge fund interest of late. There were 15 hedge funds in our database with QGEN positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare QGEN to other stocks including Dicks Sporting Goods Inc (NYSE:DKS), Kilroy Realty Corp (NYSE:KRC), and Spirit Realty Capital Inc (NYSE:SRC) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

Hedge fund activity in Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN)

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2016, a total of 24 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a gain of 60% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 13 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in QGEN heading into this year. So, let’s review which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Millennium Management holds the largest position in Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN). Millennium Management has a $74.3 million position in the stock. The second most bullish fund manager is Arthur B Cohen and Joseph Healey of Healthcor Management LP, with a $62.4 million position; 3.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Some other members of the smart money with similar optimism contain Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management, Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin’s Senator Investment Group and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

Now, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Senator Investment Group, led by Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin, established the most valuable position in Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN). Senator Investment Group had $27.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Sinclair’s Blue Jay Capital Management also made a $8.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new QGEN positions are Crispin Odey’s Odey Asset Management Group, Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, and Ken Greenberg and David Kim’s Ghost Tree Capital.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN) but similarly valued. These stocks are Dicks Sporting Goods Inc (NYSE:DKS), Kilroy Realty Corp (NYSE:KRC), Spirit Realty Capital Inc (NYSE:SRC), and Rollins, Inc. (NYSE:ROL). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to QGEN’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $398 million. That figure was $301 million in QGEN’s case. Dicks Sporting Goods Inc (NYSE:DKS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Rollins, Inc. (NYSE:ROL) is the least popular one with only 11 bullish hedge fund positions. Qiagen NV (NASDAQ:QGEN) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. This is a slightly positive signal but we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard DKS might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None