Hedge Funds Are Selling Curis, Inc. (CRIS)

Hedge fund managers like David Einhorn, Dan Loeb, or Carl Icahn became billionaires through reaping large profits for their investors, which is why piggybacking their stock picks may provide us with significant returns as well. Many hedge funds, like Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, are pretty secretive, but we can still get some insights by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings. One of the most fertile grounds for large abnormal returns is hedge funds’ most popular small-cap picks, which are not so widely followed and often trade at a discount to their intrinsic value. In this article we will check out hedge fund activity in another small-cap stock: Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS).

Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) shareholders have witnessed a decrease in support from the world’s most successful money managers recently. There were 9 hedge funds in our database with CRIS positions at the end of the third quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare CRIS to other stocks including Fred’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:FRED), NII Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:NIHD), and NV5 Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:NVEE) to get a better sense of its popularity.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 18% gains over the past 12 months, more than doubling the 8% returns enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs.

How have hedgies been trading Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS)?

At Q3’s end, a total of 9 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, down by 25% from the second quarter of 2016. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards CRIS over the last 5 quarters. So, let’s find out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Bihua Chen of Cormorant Asset Management holds the biggest position in Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS). Cormorant Asset Management has a $6.3 million position in the stock. On Cormorant Asset Management’s heels is Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management, with a $2.9 million position. Remaining professional money managers that hold long positions comprise Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP, D E Shaw, which is one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and Phill Gross and Robert Atchinson’s Adage Capital Management. We should note that none of these hedge funds are among our list of the 100 best performing hedge funds which is based on the performance of their 13F long positions in non-microcap stocks.

We already know that not all hedge funds are bullish on the stock and some hedge funds actually dropped their positions entirely. Intriguingly, Jean-Marie Eveillard’s First Eagle Investment Management dropped the biggest stake of all the investors watched by Insider Monkey, valued at about $37.5 million in stock, and Julian Baker and Felix Baker’s Baker Bros. Advisors was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $3.1 million worth of shares.

Let’s check out hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Fred’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:FRED), NII Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:NIHD), NV5 Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:NVEE), and Sinovac Biotech Ltd. (NASDAQ:SVA). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble CRIS’s market cap.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $27 million. That figure was $14 million in CRIS’s case. NII Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:NIHD) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Fred’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:FRED) is the least popular one with only 5 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS) is more popular among hedge funds. Considering that hedge funds are fond of this stock in relation to its market cap peers, it may be a good idea to analyze it in detail and potentially include it in your portfolio.

Disclosure: None