Hedge Funds Are Piling Into International Bancshares Corp (IBOC)

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the third quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 6 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC) based on that data.

Is International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC) the right pick for your portfolio? Money managers were in an optimistic mood. The number of long hedge fund bets increased by 5 recently. International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC) was in 23 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic was previously 20. This means the bullish number of hedge fund positions in this stock currently sits at its all time high. Our calculations also showed that IBOC isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings). There were 18 hedge funds in our database with IBOC holdings at the end of June.

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 we’re going to go over the recent hedge fund action regarding International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC).

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

At the end of September, a total of 23 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 28% from the previous quarter. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in IBOC over the last 25 quarters. With hedgies’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

More specifically, Polaris Capital Management was the largest shareholder of International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC), with a stake worth $53.1 million reported as of the end of September. Trailing Polaris Capital Management was Azora Capital, which amassed a stake valued at $28.9 million. Citadel Investment Group, Arrowstreet Capital, and Balyasny Asset 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 Azora Capital allocated the biggest weight to International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC), around 3.43% of its 13F portfolio. Elizabeth Park Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.08 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IBOC.

Now, some big names were leading the bulls’ herd. Holocene Advisors, managed by Brandon Haley, initiated the most valuable position in International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC). Holocene Advisors had $1.2 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp also made a $0.9 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Greg Eisner’s Engineers Gate Manager, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC) but similarly valued. These stocks are Cedar Fair, L.P. (NYSE:FUN), MarketWise Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTW), Arbor Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:ABR), PTC Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTCT), Boot Barn Holdings Inc (NYSE:BOOT), 8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. (NYSE:SHI). This group of stocks’ market valuations are closest to IBOC’s market valuation.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 17.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $228 million. That figure was $186 million in IBOC’s case. Boot Barn Holdings Inc (NYSE:BOOT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. (NYSE:SHI) is the least popular one with only 3 bullish hedge fund positions. International Bancshares Corp (NASDAQ:IBOC) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IBOC is 80. 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. 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 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 beat the market again by 5.1 percentage points. Unfortunately IBOC wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on IBOC were disappointed as the stock returned 1.9% since the end of September (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 many of these stocks already outperformed the market since 2019.

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

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