Hedge Funds Are Selling Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (BIO)

The latest 13F reporting period has come and gone, and Insider Monkey is again at the forefront when it comes to making use of this gold mine of data. Insider Monkey finished processing 867 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of September 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO)?

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO) was in 38 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of September. The all time high for this statistic is 54. BIO has experienced a decrease in support from the world’s most elite money managers of late. There were 41 hedge funds in our database with BIO holdings at the end of June. Our calculations also showed that BIO 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 take a look at the key hedge fund action regarding Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO).

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

At the end of September, a total of 38 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of -7% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BIO over the last 25 quarters. With hedge funds’ sentiment swirling, there exists a select group of notable hedge fund managers who were adding to their stakes significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Marshall Wace LLP, managed by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, holds the most valuable position in Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO). Marshall Wace LLP has a $327.7 million position in the stock, comprising 1.4% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Intermede Investment Partners, managed by Barry Dargan, which holds a $164.2 million position; 3.8% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of Ryan Tolkin (CIO)’s Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Cliff Asness’s AQR Capital Management and Israel Englander’s Millennium Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Tower House Partners allocated the biggest weight to Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO), around 18.06% of its 13F portfolio. Intermede Investment Partners is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 3.78 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BIO.

Because Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO) has faced falling interest from hedge fund managers, we can see that there was a specific group of funds that decided to sell off their positions entirely last quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Jonathan Auerbach’s Hound Partners sold off the biggest investment of the “upper crust” of funds monitored by Insider Monkey, worth about $46.6 million in stock, and Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $32.5 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as total hedge fund interest was cut by 3 funds last quarter.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO). These stocks are Qualtrics International Inc. (NASDAQ:XM), Warner Music Group Corp. (NASDAQ:WMG), Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT), PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE:PKI), International Paper Company (NYSE:IP), Kellogg Company (NYSE:K), and KE Holdings Inc (NYSE:BEKE). This group of stocks’ market valuations are similar to BIO’s market valuation.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 29 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1365 million. That figure was $1442 million in BIO’s case. Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Kellogg Company (NYSE:K) is the least popular one with only 22 bullish hedge fund positions. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:BIO) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BIO is 67.6. 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 28.6% in 2021 through November 30th and beat the market again by 5.6 percentage points. Unfortunately BIO wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BIO were disappointed as the stock returned 1% since the end of September (through 11/30) 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.