Hedge Funds Are Buying Haemonetics Corporation (HAE)

Out of thousands of stocks that are currently traded on the market, it is difficult to identify those that will really generate strong returns. Hedge funds and institutional investors spend millions of dollars on analysts with MBAs and PhDs, who are industry experts and well connected to other industry and media insiders on top of that. Individual investors can piggyback the hedge funds employing these talents and can benefit from their vast resources and knowledge in that way. We analyze quarterly 13F filings of nearly 900 hedge funds and, by looking at the smart money sentiment that surrounds a stock, we can determine whether it has the potential to beat the market over the long-term. Therefore, let’s take a closer look at what smart money thinks about Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE).

Is Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) going to take off soon? Hedge funds were becoming more confident. The number of long hedge fund bets moved up by 5 lately. Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) was in 37 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of March. The all time high for this statistic is 39. Our calculations also showed that HAE isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q1 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Hedge funds have more than $3.5 trillion in assets under management, so you can’t expect their entire portfolios to beat the market by large margins. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 115 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). So you can still find a lot of gems by following hedge funds’ moves today.

Chuck Royce

Chuck Royce of Royce & Associates

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium mining is one of the fastest growing industries right now, so we are checking out stock pitches like this emerging lithium stock. We go through lists like the 10 best battery stocks to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our homepage. Now let’s check out the latest hedge fund action regarding Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE).

Do Hedge Funds Think HAE Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

Heading into the second quarter of 2021, a total of 37 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 16% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 34 hedge funds with a bullish position in HAE a year ago. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $142.1 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by OrbiMed Advisors with a $94.6 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Royce & Associates, Millennium Management, and Polar Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Iron Triangle Partners allocated the biggest weight to Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE), around 4.66% of its 13F portfolio. BeaconLight Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 2.8 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to HAE.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were breaking ground themselves. OrbiMed Advisors, assembled the largest position in Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE). OrbiMed Advisors had $94.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Robert Henry Lynch’s Aristeia Capital also made a $4.1 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new HAE investors: George Soros’s Soros Fund Management, Krishen Sud’s Sivik Global Healthcare, and Greg Martinez’s Parkman Healthcare Partners.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) but similarly valued. These stocks are NeoGenomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEO), Blueprint Medicines Corporation (NASDAQ:BPMC), Rexnord Corp (NYSE:RXN), Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ADPT), Upwork Inc. (NASDAQ:UPWK), Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V. (NASDAQ:GRUB), and Air Lease Corp (NYSE:AL). This group of stocks’ market values resemble HAE’s market value.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
NEO 15 80571 0
BPMC 31 1058340 -7
RXN 25 383506 5
ADPT 29 2138890 -1
UPWK 32 530996 -2
GRUB 35 1075678 -3
AL 27 917435 3
Average 27.7 883631 -0.7

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 27.7 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $884 million. That figure was $586 million in HAE’s case. Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V. (NASDAQ:GRUB) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand NeoGenomics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEO) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Haemonetics Corporation (NYSE:HAE) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for HAE is 88.5. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 19.3% in 2021 through June 25th and still beat the market by 4.8 percentage points. Unfortunately HAE wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on HAE were disappointed as the stock returned -40.6% since the end of the first quarter (through 6/25) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 5 most popular stocks among hedge funds as most of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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