Hedge Funds Are Selling Qiagen NV (QGEN)

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 873 13F filings submitted by hedge funds and prominent investors. These filings show these funds’ portfolio positions as of June 30th, 2021. What do these smart investors think about Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN)?

Is Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN) an exceptional investment right now? Money managers were getting less bullish. The number of bullish hedge fund positions dropped by 5 lately. Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN) was in 22 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of June. The all time high for this statistic is 51. Our calculations also showed that QGEN isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

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

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 22 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -19% from the first quarter of 2020. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards QGEN over the last 24 quarters. With hedge funds’ capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

Of the funds tracked by Insider Monkey, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management has the biggest position in Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN), worth close to $169.3 million, accounting for 0.1% of its total 13F portfolio. Coming in second is Farallon Capital, which holds a $108.3 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors that hold long positions encompass Kamran Moghtaderi’s Eversept Partners, Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management and Doug Silverman and Alexander Klabin’s Senator Investment Group. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Eversept Partners allocated the biggest weight to Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN), around 2.47% of its 13F portfolio. Farallon Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 0.48 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to QGEN.

Judging by the fact that Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN) has experienced declining sentiment from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, logic holds that there lies a certain “tier” of hedgies that elected to cut their positions entirely by the end of the second quarter. It’s worth mentioning that Arthur B Cohen and Joseph Healey’s Healthcor Management LP said goodbye to the biggest stake of the “upper crust” of funds watched by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $40.8 million in stock, and Traci Lerner’s Chescapmanager LLC was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $13.6 million worth. These transactions are important to note, as aggregate hedge fund interest was cut by 5 funds by the end of the second quarter.

Let’s also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN). We will take a look at Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN), CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF), Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA), Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE:DAR), Lightspeed Commerce Inc. (NYSE:LSPD), Repligen Corporation (NASDAQ:RGEN), and ICON Public Limited Company (NASDAQ:ICLR). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble QGEN’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 36.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1253 million. That figure was $483 million in QGEN’s case. CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ:MORN) is the least popular one with only 24 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Qiagen NV (NYSE:QGEN) is even less popular than MORN. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for QGEN is 12.9. 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. Hedge funds clearly dropped the ball on QGEN as the stock delivered strong returns, though hedge funds’ consensus picks still generated respectable returns. 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 24% in 2021 through October 22nd and still beat the market by 1.6 percentage points. A small number of hedge funds were also right about betting on QGEN as the stock returned 11.6% since Q2 (through October 22nd) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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