Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (ANIK) Hedge Funds Are Snapping Up

A whopping number of 13F filings filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been processed by Insider Monkey so that individual investors can look at the overall hedge fund sentiment towards the stocks included in their watchlists. These freshly-submitted public filings disclose money managers’ equity positions as of the end of the three-month period that ended September 30, so let’s proceed with the discussion of the hedge fund sentiment on Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK).

Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK) investors should be aware of an increase in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. ANIK was in 17 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2016. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with ANIK holdings at the end of the previous quarter. The level and the change in hedge fund popularity aren’t the only variables you need to analyze to decipher hedge funds’ perspectives. A stock may witness a boost in popularity but it may still be less popular than similarly priced stocks. That’s why at the end of this article we will examine companies such as VASCO Data Security International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VDSI), Nautilus, Inc. (NYSE:NLS), and Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc (NYSE:PNK) to gather more data points.

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What have hedge funds been doing with Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK)?

At the end of the third quarter, a total of 17 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, up by 42% from the previous quarter. On the other hand, there were a total of 16 hedge funds with a bullish position in ANIK at the beginning of 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, Renaissance Technologies, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, has the most valuable position in Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK), worth close to $9.9 million. On Renaissance Technologies’ heels is Anders Hallberg and Carl Bennet of HealthInvest Partners AB, with a $9.7 million position; the fund has 7.2% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Some other professional money managers with similar optimism contain Israel Englander’s Millennium Management, Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management and Ken Fisher’s Fisher 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.

As aggregate interest increased, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital initiated the most outsized position in Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK). Arrowstreet Capital had $1.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’ Tudor Investment Corp also initiated a $0.6 million position during the quarter. The other funds with brand new ANIK positions are Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management, Louis Navellier’s Navellier & Associates, and Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital.

Let’s go over hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK) but similarly valued. These stocks are VASCO Data Security International, Inc. (NASDAQ:VDSI), Nautilus, Inc. (NYSE:NLS), Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc (NYSE:PNK), and Solaredge Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:SEDG). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to ANIK’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 15 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $121 million. That figure was $59 million in ANIK’s case. Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc (NYSE:PNK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Nautilus, Inc. (NYSE:NLS) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK) 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 PNK might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: None