Do Hedge Funds Love AngioDynamics, Inc. (ANGO)?

“Since 2006, value stocks (IVE vs IVW) have underperformed 11 of the 13 calendar years and when they beat growth, it wasn’t by much. Cumulatively, through this week, it has been a 122% differential (up 52% for value vs up 174% for growth). This appears to be the longest and most severe drought for value investors since data collection began. It will go our way eventually as there are too many people paying far too much for today’s darlings, both public and private. Further, the ten-year yield of 2.5% (pre-tax) isn’t attractive nor is real estate. We believe the value part of the global equity market is the only place to earn solid risk adjusted returns and we believe those returns will be higher than normal,” said Vilas Fund in its Q1 investor letter. We aren’t sure whether value stocks outperform growth, but we follow hedge fund investor letters to understand where the markets and stocks might be going. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO).

AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO) was in 15 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. ANGO investors should pay attention to an increase in hedge fund sentiment lately. There were 12 hedge funds in our database with ANGO holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that ANGO isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings).

Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

To the average investor there are tons of tools shareholders use to size up their holdings. A couple of the less known tools are hedge fund and insider trading moves. Our researchers have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the best hedge fund managers can trounce the broader indices by a healthy margin (see the details here).

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Discover is offering this insane cashback card, so we look into shorting the stock. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, “I’m investing more today than I did back in early 2009.” So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We even check out this option genius’ weekly trade ideas. This December, we recommended Adams Energy as a one-way bet based on an under-the-radar fund manager’s investor letter and the stock already gained 20 percent. With all of this in mind let’s check out the key hedge fund action encompassing AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO).

How have hedgies been trading AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 25% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards ANGO over the last 17 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Royce & Associates was the largest shareholder of AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO), with a stake worth $11.1 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Royce & Associates was Renaissance Technologies, which amassed a stake valued at $9.3 million. D E Shaw, Marshall Wace, and Millennium Management were also very fond of the stock, becoming one of the largest hedge fund holders of the company. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Royce & Associates allocated the biggest weight to AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO), around 0.1% of its 13F portfolio. Ellington is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.06 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to ANGO.

Now, key hedge funds were breaking ground themselves. Ellington, managed by Mike Vranos, initiated the most outsized position in AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO). Ellington had $0.3 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital also made a $0.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The only other fund with a brand new ANGO position is Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Springbok Capital.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO). We will take a look at INMODE LTD. (NASDAQ:INMD), Adecoagro SA (NYSE:AGRO), Mesoblast Limited (NASDAQ:MESO), and Newpark Resources Inc (NYSE:NR). This group of stocks’ market values match ANGO’s market value.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 8.75 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $51 million. That figure was $35 million in ANGO’s case. Adecoagro SA (NYSE:AGRO) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Mesoblast Limited (NASDAQ:MESO) is the least popular one with only 2 bullish hedge fund positions. AngioDynamics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANGO) 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. Our calculations showed that top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately ANGO wasn’t nearly as popular as these 20 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on ANGO were disappointed as the stock returned -16.6% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as many of these stocks already outperformed the market so far this year.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.