Here is What Hedge Funds Think About Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (IART)

At Insider Monkey, we pore over the filings of nearly 873 top investment firms every quarter, a process we have now completed for the latest reporting period. The data we’ve gathered as a result gives us access to a wealth of collective knowledge based on these firms’ portfolio holdings as of June 30th. In this article, we will use that wealth of knowledge to determine whether or not Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) makes for a good investment right now.

Is Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) ready to rally soon? Hedge funds were getting more optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions improved by 6 recently. Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) was in 19 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the second quarter of 2021. The all time high for this statistic is 23. Our calculations also showed that IART isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q2 rankings).

So, why do we pay attention to hedge fund sentiment before making any investment decisions? Our research has shown that hedge funds’ small-cap stock picks managed to beat the market by double digits annually between 1999 and 2016, but the margin of outperformance has been declining in recent years. Nevertheless, we were still able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 79 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here). We have been able to outperform the passive index funds by tracking the moves of corporate insiders and hedge funds, and we believe small investors can benefit a lot from reading hedge fund investor letters and 13F filings.

Paul Marshall Marshall Wace

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace

With all of this in mind we’re going to check out the latest hedge fund action encompassing Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART).

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

At the end of the second quarter, a total of 19 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 46% from the first quarter of 2020. By comparison, 23 hedge funds held shares or bullish call options in IART a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a few key hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).

Is IART A Good Stock To Buy?

The largest stake in Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) was held by Fisher Asset Management, which reported holding $43.3 million worth of stock at the end of June. It was followed by Arrowstreet Capital with a $11.5 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included GLG Partners, D E Shaw, and AQR Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Quantinno Capital allocated the biggest weight to Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART), around 0.39% of its 13F portfolio. TwinBeech Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, setting aside 0.21 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to IART.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, specific money managers have jumped into Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) headfirst. Arrowstreet Capital, managed by Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell, created the largest position in Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART). Arrowstreet Capital had $11.5 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates also made a $4.8 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new IART positions are Renaissance Technologies, Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp, and Paul Marshall and Ian Wace’s Marshall Wace LLP.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART). These stocks are Nevro Corp (NYSE:NVRO), Evercore Inc. (NYSE:EVR), The Chemours Company (NYSE:CC), Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT), Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ADPT), Kornit Digital Ltd. (NASDAQ:KRNT), and Duck Creek Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCT). This group of stocks’ market caps match IART’s market cap.

Ticker No of HFs with positions Total Value of HF Positions (x1000) Change in HF Position
NVRO 26 716353 -3
EVR 31 342871 0
CC 24 562111 -3
ESLT 4 48909 1
ADPT 27 2217269 -2
KRNT 21 205384 -3
DCT 18 255841 -1
Average 21.6 621248 -1.6

View table here if you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 21.6 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $621 million. That figure was $94 million in IART’s case. Evercore Inc. (NYSE:EVR) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) is the least popular one with only 4 bullish hedge fund positions. Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp (NASDAQ:IART) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for IART is 62.6. 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. 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 IART as the stock returned 3.8% since the end of the second quarter (through 10/22) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin.

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