Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Bristol Myers Squibb Company (BMY)

Hedge funds and large money managers usually invest with a focus on the long-term horizon and, therefore, short-lived dips or bumps on the charts usually don’t make them change their opinion towards a company. This time it may be different. The coronavirus pandemic destroyed the high correlations among major industries and asset classes. We are now in a stock pickers market where fundamentals of a stock have more effect on the price than the overall direction of the market. As a result we observe sudden and large changes in hedge fund positions depending on the news flow. Let’s take a look at the hedge fund sentiment towards Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) to find out whether there were any major changes in hedge funds’ views.

Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) has seen an increase in hedge fund interest of late. Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) was in 74 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 136. Our calculations also showed that BMY 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 we’re going to take a look at the key hedge fund action regarding Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY).

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

Heading into the fourth quarter of 2021, a total of 74 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey held long positions in this stock, a change of 1% from the previous quarter. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards BMY over the last 25 quarters. So, let’s check out which hedge funds were among the top holders of the stock and which hedge funds were making big moves.

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has the largest position in Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY), worth close to $1.3045 billion, corresponding to 0.4% of its total 13F portfolio. On Berkshire Hathaway’s heels is Renaissance Technologies, holding a $421.3 million position; the fund has 0.5% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Other members of the smart money with similar optimism consist of Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global, John Overdeck and David Siegel’s Two Sigma Advisors and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Birchview Capital allocated the biggest weight to Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY), around 32.05% of its 13F portfolio. Healthcor Management LP is also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 9.15 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to BMY.

As one would reasonably expect, key money managers were leading the bulls’ herd. Point72 Asset Management, managed by Steve Cohen, created the biggest position in Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY). Point72 Asset Management had $39.4 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Christopher James’s Partner Fund Management also initiated a $36.2 million position during the quarter. The following funds were also among the new BMY investors: Doron Breen and Mori Arkin’s Sphera Global Healthcare Fund, Mike Masters’s Masters Capital Management, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) but similarly valued. We will take a look at Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX), Raytheon Technologies Corp (NYSE:RTX), The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA), Union Pacific Corporation (NYSE:UNP), BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), and TotalEnergies SE (NYSE:TTE). All of these stocks’ market caps are closest to BMY’s market cap.

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 50.4 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $3046 million. That figure was $4759 million in BMY’s case. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand TotalEnergies SE (NYSE:TTE) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Bristol Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for BMY is 72.3. 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 BMY wasn’t nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on BMY were disappointed as the stock returned -9.4% 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.