Hedge Funds Are Crazy About BTRS Holdings Inc. (BTRS)

Last year we predicted the arrival of the first US recession since 2009 and we told in advance that the market will decline by at least 20% in (Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW). In these volatile markets we scrutinize hedge fund filings to get a reading on which direction each stock might be going. In this article, we will take a closer look at hedge fund sentiment towards BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS).

BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS) has seen an increase in support from the world’s most elite money managers recently. BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS) was in 28 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 26. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. There were 21 hedge funds in our database with BTRS positions at the end of the second quarter. Our calculations also showed that BTRS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings).

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, lithium prices have more than doubled over the past year, so we go through lists like the 10 best EV 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. With all of this in mind let’s view the key hedge fund action encompassing BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 28 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 33% from one quarter earlier. By comparison, 0 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in BTRS a year ago. With hedgies’ capital changing hands, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes substantially (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Robert Joseph Caruso’s Select Equity Group has the largest position in BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS), worth close to $49.5 million, comprising 0.2% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Washington Harbour Partners, led by Mina Faltas, holding a $42.8 million position; the fund has 5.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining members of the smart money that hold long positions include Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin’s Senator Investment Group, Richard Mashaal’s Rima Senvest Management and Kerr Neilson’s Platinum Asset Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Washington Harbour Partners allocated the biggest weight to BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS), around 5.06% of its 13F portfolio. Rima Senvest Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 0.77 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BTRS.

As industrywide interest jumped, key hedge funds have jumped into BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS) headfirst. Platinum Asset Management, managed by Kerr Neilson, created the most valuable position in BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS). Platinum Asset Management had $21.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management also initiated a $17.8 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new BTRS investors: Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, Michael Platt and William Reeves’s BlueCrest Capital Mgmt., and Nathaniel August’s Mangrove Partners.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS). These stocks are Ferro Corporation (NYSE:FOE), MYR Group Inc (NASDAQ:MYRG), Meta Financial Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CASH), CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI), Castle Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSTL), Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:MDRX), and Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE:AVYA). All of these stocks’ market caps are similar to BTRS’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 19.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $365 million. That figure was $280 million in BTRS’s case. Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE:AVYA) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Castle Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSTL) is the least popular one with only 15 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks BTRS Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BTRS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BTRS is 90. 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 31.1% in 2021 through December 9th and still beat the market by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately BTRS wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BTRS were disappointed as the stock returned -24.1% since the end of the third quarter (through 12/9) 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.